Man Ray Portrait Exhibition March 2013

I have never seen any examples of Man Ray's work other than in books so I took the opportunity to visit the current exhibition in London last week.

Knowing that he was anything but a conventional photographer, I was interested to see his approach to portraits. The exhibition was arranged chronologically which was helpful in terms of seeing the development of his work over time. Images included classic celebrity portraits ( Elizabeth Duquette in 1948), fashion shoots and examples of magazine work, for example, Gertrude Lawrence in Harper's Bazaar (1936).The descriptions alongside each image were disappointing however, in that they concentrated on biographical detail pertaining to the subject and as always, I wanted to know more about the photographer's intention and the technical side of the image. Also, many of the images were extremely small ( less than postcard size ) which made viewing difficult.

That said, I found some images  that really intrigued me. His solarised portrait  of Lee Miller  taken round about 1929 was very striking and drove me to find out more about the process of solarisation. Interestingly he returned to this process for a portrait of Leslie Caron in the 1950s.

I discovered that solarisation is a phenomenon in photography in which the image recorded on a negative or on a photographic print is wholly or partially reversed in tone. Dark areas appear light or light areas appear dark. It was usually caused by accidentally exposing an exposed plate or film to light during developing.The effect is one of the earliest known effects in photography and certainly known to Daguerre. Apparently Man Ray perfected the technique after it was accidentally discovered in his darkroom by his assistant Lee Miller.
'Noire and Blanche' (1926) was a very good example of his series of female faces made up in a mask-like way and placed in an unusual composition. Here he placed an African mask from the Ivory Coast next to the head of Kiki, resting with her eyes closed creating a very memorable evocative surrealist image.

His first colour portrait of Genica Athanasiou ( 1933 ) was beautifully composed and the colours very evocative of the period. He used the time consuming tri-colour carbro printing process. This involved the printing of three negatives taken through red,green and blue filters on casbon tissue that are then transferred, one after the other onto paper to form the final print.

Coming away from the exhibition, I felt my appetite whetted for more Man Ray images and I would like to take a wider look at his work and the interplay between his photography, painting and sculpture. More reading needed..