Inspired By Man Ray

Man Ray was an artist working in the early 20th century. He was American but worked mostly in Paris and his work is related with the Surrealist and Dada movements. Man Ray worked with many mediums such as painting, sculpture and photography.

In his photography, May Ray dealt with a variety of different subjects and presented them in an unusual and revolutionary way for his time. He pioneered the use of photo-grams in high art and even renamed them after him self: rayographs. Man Ray's black and white photographs are full of light and mystery. Man Ray shot some of his portraits in an editorial but still surreal and abstract style.

One of Man Ray's photos that I am most inspired by is from the July 1930 cover of "VU" entitled "The Tragic Necklace". It is a black and white photo of a barley dressed, reclined woman with a large snake around her neck.

This photo interests me because it is of a similar subject matter that I have photographed before but with a very different theme. This is more of an elegant beauty shot rather than one dealing with death and fear. I chose this photo to emulate because I would like to revisit the subject in a similar way.

A second photo of Man Ray's that inspired me is "Tears" from 1930. This is a very up close shot of a woman's face with very artificial tears rolling down her cheek.

I think it would be interesting to work with certain aspects of this photo like replacing the tears with diamonds or photographing some sort of transformation within a close up portrait, like hair turning into water.

The overall ideas that Man Ray most deals with in his photographs that I would like to work with are the surreal ways he photographs elements of the human form and how he captures and uses light to give his works an unearthly feel.