M+S Research - Man Ray

Biography

Born: 27th August 1890

Died: 18th November 1976

Nationality: American

Occupation: Photographer, Painter

Man Ray(Emmanuel Radnitzy) was most known for his avante-garde photography, and worked in fields of both fashion and portraits. He was also known for his photograms which he called "Rayographs" in reference to himself.

Man Ray interest in art was first noted during his high school where he was skilled in both drafting and art technique. After graduating he was offered a scholarship in architecture, however he turned it down in pursuit of a career as an artist.

Technique 

His original technique was painting in a 20th century style, although he had trouble at the time, but after he went to art college the quality of his work drastically increased. He studied avante-garde art work and begun working to the same style. He later started doing photography, mainly close-ups or extreme close-ups as the focus of his pieces. He later went on and studied and reinvented the technique of 'Solarisation'. He used this to develop his own style of photograms know as "Rayographs". 

Examples of his work

Paintings

This painting seems to be a landscape, with a man painted on what appears to be a path. The idea behind this painting seems to be surrealism. I found this painting very interesting as it has a person with no features just placed on the path randomly, It seems that Man Ray did have a good idea about surreal and wanted to make it as obvious as possible.

Photography

This is one of Man Rays photographs of the extreme close-ups. What I found interesting about this piece is the tears below the eyes and how they seem perfectly placed. The tears likely are placed however I still feel they give power to the image by how calm they are and how it almost seems peaceful, in contrast to tears usual meaning of sadness and depression.

Rayograms

This 'Rayograph' makes use of Man Rays Solarisation technique. What I like about this piece is how the pattern repeats itself, It gives it a rippling effect which works well with the idea of surrealism.

My Own Work

Contact Sheet of Photographs taken for this piece:

This piece was inspired by Man Ray's photography. I started out with a close-up picture of a friend. (Bottom Row, second column from the left). I started by crop and levelling the photograph.

From here, my next step was to level and desaturate the Image.

Although it somewhat followed Man Rays example, I still felt that it didn't really have much power to it, it wasn't very dramatic or special. I had an idea that maybe solarising the image would make it seem further along the lines of Man Rays style. This is when I found the solarise filter on Photoshop.

After solarising the whole Photograph I felt it did seem more like a Man Ray photograph, however I still felt that it wasn't quite powerful enough.

For this newer version, I went back to the original photo, however this time I cropped down to just before the chin and removed the eyes. I followed the previous steps again, however this time, I duplicated the layer, lowered the opacity and dragged the clone across. This gave it an almost surreal effect and made it look much more powerful. What I like most about this piece, is how it captures both simplicity and surrealism in a powerful merge, I also like, how it's uses double exposure to again make something simple seem much more powerful.