That man Man

MAN RAY my favourite photographer

15th April 2013

A long time ago a famous novelist appeared in a TV advertisement. She said “I’m careful what I read. One should never read rubbish, it could be infectious. One might start writing it.” As she picked up a newspaper the message appeared ‘Edna O’Brien reads The Guardian.’ 
I take a similar view of photography, so I'm careful about the photographs I view.

I didn't want to miss the exhibition of Man Ray's portraits at the National Portrait Gallery so I made a special trip to London this week. I admire Man Ray's imagination, his eye for form and detail and some of his technical tricks too. I like the fact that he didn’t take photography too seriously, but as he belonged to the Dada group and then the Surrealists it was just one of the ways he used to express himself. As an artist he painted, wrote, made objects and created films: he took up photography to record works of art and to earn a living. He always had his own ideas, but he took a real interest in other artists and their ideas too, as his portraits show (although he took many other types of photo too).

There were one or two prints that I had seen exhibited before and more that I knew from books, but many of them were quite new to me. It is always interesting to see a photographer’s own prints, in this exhibition there are some little contact prints which are marked for cropping when enlarged. Fortunately I carry a little plastic Fresnel magnifier with my credit cards, so I could examine them quite well.

His ability was made clear in one of the earliest photos on show, a beautifully lit profile of his great friend Marcel Duchamp (who was so important in the rise of modernism) from 1916. There are many other portraits of artists, models and fashions from Paris in the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘50s and from Hollywood in the ‘40s. It was nice to see the famous images of Kiki de Montparnasse and Lee Miller again. I was impressed by his ability to capture something more than the formal pose - I now have clear memories of Erik Satie’s chuckle, Lady Diana Cooper’s eyes, Picasso’s hands, the angle of Le Corbusier’s head, Virginia Woolf’s animation in conversation and the poise of Ava Gardner. The photo that I really coveted was a tiny circular colour print of the face and hands of Juliet Greco, it could be kept in a jewelled case like a Hilliard miniature or mass produced as a lapel button.

Man Ray is famous for his so-called solarised portraits, which actually use the Sabattier effect. It is said that he was working in the darkroom with Lee Miller (his assistant and lover at the time) when a mouse ran over her foot and she turned the light on while the plate was in the developer. Man Ray was struck by the effect and learned how to master it. I really liked two beautiful Sabattier portraits of Schiaparelli and Leslie Caron

I bought a print of his famous solarised profile of Lee Miller, which I think is one of the most beautiful photographs ever made, plus a catalogue which I look forward to studying in detail. I thoroughly recommend the exhibition: the links below give a little taste of the master’s work.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturepicturegalleries/9553243/Man-Ray-National-Portrait-Gallery-stages-first-museum-exhibition-devoted-to-photographers-portraits.html?frame=2344537 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/9818030/Man-Rays-greatest-portraits.html?frame=2458468