Born: 1890
Died: 1976
Real Name: Emmanuel Radnitzky
Place of Birth: Pennsylvania, America
Occupation: Surrealism Photographer
Camera: Unknown
Style: Surreal, fashion, conceptual, black and white
Notable Places of Work:
- Offered a scholarship as an architect but chose an art career
- Born in Pennsylvania, America
- Lived in Paris, France
Known For:
- Dada movement
- Surrealism
- Collage
- Film
Examples of Work:
"The Violin of Ingres" (1924)
This image was a study into the objectification of the female form and more widely the animate objects in a position of an inanimate object and was created by painting f-holes onto the lower back of the muse Kiki Montparnasse.
The image was inspired by Ingres and his passion for violins which encouraged the pun which gave name to the piece "Le Violin d'Ingres".
The image evokes a connotation of female objectification and the confusion between reality and unreality in that the subject is both real as a woman but unreal as a violin; she is simultaneously animate and inanimate and objectified and an object.
"The Kiss" (1922)
The above image is a rayograph and is the technique eponymously named after Man Ray himself.
The photograph is two exposures of two layers, the bottom layer being a pair of hands laid directly on to photo-sensitive paper which is exposed to light. The second layer was then made when Man Ray and his lover Kiki Montparnasse shared a kiss.
The image provides an explicit idea about the passion and desire of humanity but also infers the many levels of human interaction. Just as the image is formed by many layers so are the human mind and therefore social interaction.
"Glass Tears" (1932)
The image is reminiscent of a film still and as such the photograph is cropped to convey Ray's interest in cinematography.
The model is instead a fashion mannequin with glass tears and thus could imply the false nature of humanity when interacting in relationships with one another as contextually the image was created as a retort to an ex-lover, Lee Miller, who left Ray.
"Black and White" (1926)
Contextually African art and culture was in Vogue and considered an aspirational aesthetic of the period.
The image challenges the conflicts of society in relation to race ideologies and racism.
The connotations of the black and white is a study of both the medium that was available at the time but also used to exaggerate the ideas of race and ethnicity within the context.
"The Gift" (1921)
The image was created as a gift, hence the name, for the gallery owner who was hosting Man Ray's first individual show in Paris.
The surrealism ideology comes from the object being rendered useless by the pin tacks causing the iron to be unable to fulfil its primary function of gliding smoothly to iron cloth.
a good post here with a good level of research...
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