So exotic, so homemade : surrealism, Englishness and documentary photography

We cite from the COVER:
"In City gorged with dreams (2002), Ian Walker challenged established ideas about Surrealist photography by emphasising the key role played by documentary photographs in Parisian Surrealism.
Now Walker turns his attention to the arrival of Surrealism in England in 1936. Examining for the first time the surprising relationship between Surrealism and English documentary photography and film, the book shows that some of the most interesting work of the period was made in the ambiguous spaces between them."
"One of the key themes in this book is the relationship between the 'homely' and the 'exotic'. Individual chapters contain detailed studies of the landscape photography of Paul Nash and Eileen Agar, Roland Penrose's journal of his trip across the Balkans with Lee Miller, the innovative mix of poetry and ethnography in Mass-Observation and the shadowed England constructed in the work of Bill Brandt."
"This history continues with an account of the merging of Surrealism and documentary photography during the London Blitz. A final chapter explores elements of Surrealism in the work of many later artists: Nigel Henderson, Tony Ray-Jones, Ian Breakwell, Susan Hiller, Richard Wentworth, John Davies, Patrick Keiller and Martin Parr."
Based on extensive archival research, interviews and visits to sites where the photographs were made, this book is rich in detailed analysis yet written in an accessible and often witty style.
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For facsimile view of Table of Contents please click URL.