Although the movement is more often associated with fine art, surrealism and photography have always made a perfect pairing. Starting with the likes of Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dali, Andrew Kertesz and Hans Bellmer, this specific photographic format has remained popular throughout its history, adding strange, disorientating and beautiful creations to the industry.

This fascinating cultural art movement actually started way back in the 1920s, and more recently, photographers’ aims to evolve dreamlike pictures to a new level has only grown stronger. Here are a few of the world’s most notable contemporary surrealist photographers that prove that the scope of visual arts simply has no limit.

#1: Lara Zankoul

Zankoul is a Lebanese-born conceptual photographer who first stepped onto the scene back in 2008. After graduating from the American University of Beirut with a Masters in Economics, she chose photography as a way to escape the mundane nature of her everyday life working in a cubicle at her first full time position.

#2: Martin Stranka

This self-taught professional photographer is based in the Czech Republic, and was born early in 1984. His distinctive photographic vision portrays unique spaces with an inherently serendipitous and balanced air to them, much like the interface of Lucky Nugget casino Canada. His artistic aim in his sophisticated images is to bridge the gap between awakening and dreaming, if only for a few seconds.

#3: Ronen Goldman

Goldman is a conceptual artist and photographer from the capital of Tel Aviv in Israel. He specializes in creating photographic dreamscapes; conceptually based images that illustrate his own dreams. His work is known for portraying deep and powerful emotions ranging from exhilaration and joy to paranoia and psychosis, in the same way that many dreams do. Movement is also a major feature of many of Goldman’s most acclaimed works, as he manages to perfectly capture dynamic gestures in a static medium.

#4: Tommy Ingberg

This Swedish artist is known across the globe for his black and white surreal montages, which he creates in his own studio after intense sessions of photography. He focuses on simplistic, scaled-back compositions that contain only a few key elements, but every single part of his works add to the story being told. Ingberg also leaves a few pictorial gaps for his viewers to fill, producing an ethereal final product.

His work Stone Part I, for example, features a massive stone hovering above the head of a faceless man, who is using an umbrella to shield himself from it. As for whether or not it worked – that’s up to you to decide.

#5: Caitlin Worthington

This young commercial and portrait photographer in the Western Australian city of Perth began her career in the industry at the tender age of 15. Later, she studied at the Central Institute of Technology for 3 years, gaining an Advanced Diploma in Photography. Caitlin’s passion is creating images that allow viewers to step into a veritable dream-world, complete with bright colors and stark contrasts that create beautiful, dreamy juxtapositions.