Jerry Uelsmann redefined and pushed the boundaries of surrealism during his time. His photo montages can be categorized as “the most significant silver printmaking achievements of the sixties (Masters of Photography). Uelsmann was born on June 11, 1934 in Detroit. He went to public school and his grades were mediocre at best, it was during this time that his interest in photography sparked. After graduating Cooley High School in 1952, he moved to New York. He believed the camera gave him the ability to exist outside himself. He got jobs doing photography for weddings and soon moved onto bigger things. In 1957 he obtained his Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from Rochester Institute of Technology and in 1960 his Master's Degree and his Master of Fine Arts degree at Indiana University. Uelsmann started his teaching career at the University of Florida in 1960, his first real job offer. It was in the art department when his skill in combining negatives to come up with a final print evolved. His first photograph was shown in Photography Annual in 1957 and he had his first solo show in 1967 at the Museum of Modern Art. He helped found the Society of Photographic Education in 1962. He is internationally exhibited and well known in Sweden, Japan, Australia, and France. His process is revealed in his book called Process and Perception (1985), which exposes intimately the steps of how he creates a cohesive composition from the multiple negatives taken. 
Uelsmann's technique shows his patience and mastery of post-visualization where he has the foresight to come up with a cohesive image (Ezine Articles). He is unique because he challenged Weston's purist notion of pre-visualization by allowing his work to develop over a lengthy creative period. He simply integrates the different negatives to make a piece of art that represents him. Peter C. Bunnell calls Uelsmann's vast collection of negatives “his visual vocabulary.” He sees his photographs as appealing because they create an automatic response in human that is “pre-verbal” (Legends Online). Each of his photographs is a dramatic, impossible and rare instant in which events that should not be together occupy the same space. He has mastered his printing technique, which makes it difficult to tell what part of the photograph is manipulated and what is straight. Uelsmann's pieces disregards the simple definition and his photographs bring about a fantasy that keeps the viewer intrigued. He accredits the attraction and temptation of his work to how people respond to good music; his photographs have the power to connect one with an aesthetic reality that can hardly be expressed by language.
Uelsmann confronts various levels of reality and represents a unique world, his style is especially shown in his work titled Rock Tree (1969).
The foreground equivocally expresses either a crossing of the roots below or a reflection of the tree in a puddle, which plays on the perception of reality and its portrayal (Encyclopedia of World Biography). This picture can be personal to everyone as each individual instinctively feels a different way about it. Philosopher's Desk (1976) is one of Uelsmann's most mystifying works. The fact that the room has no ceiling 
adds to the surrealism. It is only these ambiguous clouds, which drift overhead in a sunlit sky. A viewer may see the clouds as representing a threatening apprehension or as hope letting the sunlight scintillate. It can give the impression of an Alice in Wonderland feel, with the comfort of a Victorian study playing against an infinite abyss. In Untitled (1989) the top of the desk is on fire next to a lonely chair. This conflagration explores the breath-taking landscape of Yosemite, which is where Uelsmann gave a workshop in 1973. Uelsmann's really conveys a message with this photograph as he chose the symbol of the burning desk to show how real ecological issues really are. He wants to express the threat of urban intrusion to a pristine wilderness area. Another one of Uelsmann's master pieces is Untitled (1975), which makes the viewer see a dream-like scene that conveys both culture and nature and birth and 
death. The man in the shadow adds mystery, no one knows if he is walking toward or away from the dark, void space behind the door. Many of his pieces are without a specific title because he wanted the viewers to find individual meanings from the same images they see in the photograph. Other famous photographs include Equivalent (1964) and Floating Boat in Waterfall (2000). His photographs all portray similar images of rocks, trees, human figures and water in new and exciting ways.
Jerry Uelsmann's influences at school were Ralph Hattersley, Minor White and Henry Holmes Smith; he called them his “photographic godfathers”. He learned the most valuable lesson from White, that the camera could do much more beyond just saving an image; it has the potential to “transcend the initial subject matter” (Encyclopedia of World Biography Supplement). White had a saying: “One should snap objects, not only for what they are, but for what else they are” (Encyclopedia of World Biography Supplement). Uelsmann believed to transform what was seen, he had to learn the technicalities of the camera-lens system rather than focus on the minor details of the image. Uelsmann remembers clearly a life-altering moment in Smith's class. They were discussing Arthur Segal's photograph that was a print consisting of superimposed images. Uelsmann pointed out an imperfection in the photograph and believed he could fix it. Smith laughed off Uelsmann's comment, which only encouraged his perseverance to became technically adept and prove something to Smith.
Near the end of the 1960s, straight photography had been the prevailing mode for almost forty years; it had been deemed the medium’s most honest expression by photographers and critics alike. Surrealist photo montages by artists like Man Ray, however, were not forgotten. Man Ray's most famous pieces are Tears (1923), Le violin de Ingres (1924) and Observatory Time - The Lovers (1934). Man Ray's photographs are often more crude than Uelsmann's, which can be described as seamless. Man Ray was motivated by his obsession for women and began to experiment with female eroticism. 
Uelsmann also sees a particular beauty in females, which is evident in many of his photographs. Uelsmann's other photographic influences include: Marcel Marien, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Lee Miller, Jean Cocteau and Herbert Bayer. All these surrealists can be considered abstract artists who encompass the human mind’s spontaneous ideas in their work. Although the subjects in Uelsmann's photographs
may vary, the surrealist approach, and the method used do not. Since the public is now much more welcoming when it comes to less traditional works of art, Uelsmann's recent photographs are more appraised and even more “real” compared to his older works. With so many modern advancements in the field of photography, Uelsmann's work can be imitated in a short period of time. But in his time, many referred to his technique as remarkable and he shattered the popular notion of photography. We all anticipate the future of surrealism, which holds so much promise with all the new digital possibilities.
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