08.19. | Moustache Mayhem in Vienna: Meeting Dalí

Well, the final big adventure of August certainly wasn't a quiet one. We said goodbye to the month by storming the stronghold of Surrealism and heading straight into the twists and turns of Salvador Dalí's mind—right here in Vienna. This was our fourth cultural meet-and-create adventure, practically a tradition by now, and the atmosphere could have made even the master's moustache jealous.

But who exactly was Dalí, beyond being a Spanish gentleman with facial hair that could double as an antenna? Imagine a man who painted dreams onto canvas. Melting clocks, burning giraffes, lobsters instead of telephone receivers... For Dalí, reality was merely a suggestion, one best ignored with elegance.

The Vienna exhibition was the perfect playground for us to get a little lost in that brilliant madness ourselves.

Nearly twenty art detectives assembled, and to my genuine surprise about half the group were completely new faces. (Or perhaps the surreal lighting was playing tricks on me.) The evening also served as the strictly-not-secret dress rehearsal for our “Bring Out the Artist in You” series launching in September. We wanted to see whether Vienna's art-loving community could handle the unconventional format.

Spoiler: it could.

After I handed out the technical information required for our secret mission—don't worry, no spy exam was necessary—we arrived at the first and apparently most sacrilegious instruction you can give inside a museum:

“Right. Everyone turn your phone UPSIDE DOWN.”

Yes, really. Zoom was forbidden, and we had to look at the images in exactly the opposite way common sense might suggest. I encouraged everyone to get visually inside the installations—figuratively, for the sake of the museum guards' blood pressure—and forget how one is “supposed” to look at an exhibition.

Why all this strange artistic mountaineering?

Think about the old masters. They didn't only paint; they encoded. A brushstroke, a hidden symbol, an unusual shadow—each could carry a message for people who knew how to read it. They were the hackers of the 16th century, only their tools were canvas and oil paint.

Our next exercise for the brain was a heart hunt.

The order: switch the phones to black-and-white mode and start searching for hidden heart shapes. Half a heart, a complete heart, a twisted heart—anything counted. Zoom was allowed again, and the phones were permitted to regain their dignity by returning to the correct orientation.

Needless to say, the group got hooked. Everyone found something. I'm curious how many you can spot in the gallery at the end of this post.

To wind down, we moved on to colour therapy.

The assignment: “Photograph something RED.”

A little colourful history first: red is not simply another colour on the palette. For thousands of years it was associated with luxury, power and wealth because certain red and purple dyes were extraordinarily difficult and expensive to produce. Kings and cardinals wore them because they could afford to.

At the same time, red is the colour of blood, war and danger—but also passion and love. Few colours provoke so many emotional associations.

Dalí knew how to use it. Red pulls the eye.

By the time we reached this exercise, everyone was primed for it. After so many rounds through the exhibition, the red details seemed almost to shout from the walls.

Part of the BANHALMI ecosystem

For the professional context and practical side of portrait photography, visit the BANHALMI professional website. Related art series, books and exhibitions are preserved in the BANHALMI ART archive.