precedes sleep”, a state of drowsiness. Hains’ use of hypnagogy enabled him to tear himself away from the usual tendency of photography to mimic: it deconstructed the light and transformed the image into abstract lines. He made use of procedures adapted from pre-war Dada and Surrealism with hypnagogic abstract photographs, often produced with the help of distorting mirrors. In 1948, he presented his first exhibition, Hypnagogical Photographs, at the Gallery Colette Allendy in Paris. In 1952, he published Graphism in Photographs: When photography becomes the object in the fifth issue of Photo Almanach Prisma, where he explained that manipulating the image enabled him to make the subject abstract. This text served as his own personal manifesto, where he questioned the generally accepted notion of realism and affirmed, citing Apollinaire, his conviction of the necessity for the artist to invent new realities. Films and Ultra-Letters In 1949, Hains produced his first black and white short film: Saint Germain-des Prés Colombiens. From 1950 to 1954, he created several more movies, including Pénélope, Loi du 29 juillet 1881 and Défense d’afficher. Together with Jacques Villeglé, they adopted the process of visual distortion, adding grooved glass to the camera and producing abstract films inspired by Henri Matisse's watercolor cut-outs. Composer Pierre Schaeffer added onto a film of theirsvhis own music in 1959, and named it Etude aux allures. Hains attended Lettrist performances, particularly appreciating the work of François Dufrêne, Isidore Isou and Gabriel Pomerand. In 1950, he devoted himself to creating a representation in plastic of the written output of the Lettrist movement, shredding letters with the fluted lens. This photographic process of deformation fell within a modern aesthetic initiated by Stéphane Mallarmé, further pursued by Guillaume Apollinaire, and later by the Lettrists. In 1953, Hains published Hépérile éclaté in collaboration with Villeglé. The phonetic poem Hyperile written by Camille Bryen, pioneer of lyrical abstraction, was exploded into an Ultra-Lettrist presentation: a poem not intended to be read. Décollage In 1949 Hains and Jacques Villeglé began to use torn posters to create Paintings. They collaboratively produced a series of works, using torn concert posters and advertisements taken from around the city, in a process known as décollage. Their first work was titled Ach Alma Manetro, named after words that emerged from the chaos of the strewn letters. In 1954, François Dufrêne introduced Yves Klein to Hains in front of Le Dôme Café, on Boulevard