WILLIAM MORTENSEN THE FORBIDDEN FANTASY

William Mortensen was a popular celebrity portrait photographer in the 1930s, churning out glam images for the movie magazines. But he was also a rebel whose special effects images prefigure the age of Photoshop.

Book critic Cary Loren has a great essay about Mortensen's work on bibliophile blog A Journey Round My Skull. He writes that Mortensen's arresting, bizarre work has been mostly forgotten because it didn't fit into the early twentieth century's passion for photographic realism. Unlike influential contemporaries like Ansel Adams, Mortensen refused to reproduce what he saw realistically.