Surrealism lies at the heart of the photographic enterprise: in the very creation of a duplicate world, or a reality in the second degree, narrower but more dramatic than one perceived by natural vision. The less doctored, the less patiently crafted, the more naïve – the more authoritative the photograph is likely to be.

Surrealism has always courted accidents, welcomed the uninvited, flattered disorderly presences…
It is photography that has best shown how to juxtapose the sewing machine and the umbrella. P. 52

(The sales pitch for the first Kodak, in 1888, was: “You press the button, we do the rest.” The purchaser was guaranteed that the picture would be “without any mistake.”) In the fairy tale of photography the magic box insures veracity and banishes error, compensates for inexperience and rewards innocence. P. 53

Surrealists misunderstood what was most brutally moving, irrational, unassimilable, mysterious – time itself. What renders a photograph surreal is its irrefutable pathos as a message from time past, and the concreteness of its intimations about social class…
Class was the deepest mystery: the inexhaustible glamour of the rich and powerful, the opaque degradation of the poor and outcast. P. 54

But essentially the camera makes everyone a tourist in other people’s reality, and eventually one’s own. P. 57

Poverty is no more surreal than wealth; a body clad in filthy rags is not more surreal than a principessa dressed for a ball or a pristine nude. What is surreal is the distance imposed, and bridged, by the photograph: the social distance and the distance in time…
Photographers need not have an ironic, intelligent attitude toward their stereotyped material. Pious, respectful fascination may do just as well. P. 58

–excerpt On Photography, Melancholy Objects by Susan Sontag

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Now I understand, more or less…  The surreal is a juxtaposition, a sleight of hand by the mind, a fabrication of the “foreign” — of realities close to home to everyone of us. 

How about a tune to get us through?  Viva La Vita by Coldplay.

Viva La Vida

By Coldplay

I used to rule the world
Seas would rise when I gave the word
Now in the morning I sleep alone
Sweep the streets I used to own

I used to roll the dice
Feel the fear in my enemy’s eyes
Listened as the crowd would sing,
“Now the old king is dead! Long live the king!”
One minute I held the key
Next the walls were closed on me
And I discovered that my castles stand
Upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand

I hear Jerusalem bells a-ringing
Roman cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror, my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field
For some reason I can’t explain
Once you’d gone there was never
Never an honest word
And that was when I ruled the world

It was a wicked and wild wind
Blew down the doors to let me in
Shattered windows and the sound of drums
People couldn’t believe what I’d become
Revolutionaries wait
For my head on a silver plate
Just a puppet on a lonely string
Oh who would ever want to be king?

I hear Jerusalem bells a-ringing
Roman cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror, my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field
For some reason I can’t explain
I know St. Peter won’t call my name
Never an honest word
But that was when I ruled the world

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh [5x]

Hear Jerusalem bells a-ringing
Roman cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror, my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field
For some reason I can’t explain
I know St. Peter won’t call my name
Never an honest word
But that was when I ruled the world

Composed by Guy Rupert Berryman, Jonathan Mark Buckland