Man Ray [Historical Artist]

Man Ray (1890-1976) was a modernist who contributed to the Dada and Surrealist movements. He liked to experiment with his art, mainly painting and photography and sculpture. Man Ray influenced photography with his fashion and portrait pictures. He invented the technique known as solarization and another he called rayographs.

Solarization-Image recorded on a print is wholly or partially reversed in tone.

No Title (Two Profiles Solarized), 1935.

Rayograph-A photographic image made without a camera by placing objects on photography paper and exposing it to light. This process is known as photograms but Man Ray claimed his work in this process by calling them rayographs.

Rayograph

Man Ray also helped introduce African art to the western world through his photography. I got the chance to see this photography along with the actual artwork at the UVA art museum I visited. Also displayed were some Walker Evans photographs of the same thing.

 "I paint what cannot be photographed, that which comes from the imagination or from dreams, or from an unconscious drive. I photograph the things I do not wish to paint, the things that already have an existence." -Man Ray