It makes a change posting about Zoltán Glass instead of his brother Stephen. Zoltán ran one of the biggest and busiest studios around, working with pretty much every ad agency in England. With his amazing facilities, he could be indulgent when it came to specially built indoor sets and oversized items. A simple ashtray might become a modernist monument, while a fountain pen could stretch to skyscraper heights.
The modernist and surrealist movements collided beautifully in mid-century photography, and Glass was a master at this mash-up. Modernists loved their stark forms and crisp shadows; surrealists preferred to shake things up by playing with scale and context. Glass mastered what I like to call the “reverse dollhouse effect”. These shots of the lilliputian Lucinda Bathurst posing with an ashtray and cigarette is a case in point.
