b. 27 August 1890; d. 18 November 1975
Man Ray (his real name was Emmanuel Rudnitsky) was born in Philadelphia, and studied at the Academy of Art, New York. He was a painter and sculptor in the surrealist and abstract movements of the 1920s and beyond. He started photography in 1915, having been introduced to it by Alfred Stieglitz.
He also made Rayographs, which were artistic photograms using three dimensional opaque and translucent objects.
Man Ray was born somewhat later than the time when controversy over art "versus" photography raged (See Artists and Photography) but his comments put this issue into perspective:
"There are purists in all forms of expression. There are photographers who maintain that this medium has no relation to painting. There are painters who despise photography, although in the last century have been inspired by it and used it. There are architects who refuse to hang a painting in their buildings maintaining that their own work is a complete expression. In the same spirit, when the automobile arrived, there were those that declared the horse to be the most perfect form of locomotion.
All these attitudes result from a fear that the one will replace the other. Nothing of the kind happened. We have simply increased our range, our vocabulary. I see no one trying to abolish the automobile because we have the airplane.
I was very fortunate in starting my career as a painter. When first confronted with a camera, I was very much intimidated. So I decided to investigate. But I maintained the approach of a painter to such a degree that I have been accused of trying to make a photograph look like a painting. I did not have to try, it just turned out that way because of my background and training. Many years ago I had conceived the idea of making a painting look like a photograph! There was a valid reason for this. I wished to distract the attention from any manual dexterity, so that the basic idea stood out. Of course there will always be those who look at works with a magnifying glass and try to see "how", instead of using their brains and figure out "why". A book was once published of twenty photographs by twenty photographers, of the same model. They were as different as twenty paintings of the same model. Which was proof, once and for all, of the flexibility of the camera and its validity as an instrument of expression. There are many paintings and buildings that are not works of art. It is the man behind whatever instrument who determines the work of art."
"Some of the most complete and satisfying works of art have been produced when their authors had no idea of creating a work of art, but were concerned with the expression of an idea. Nature does not create works of art. It is we, and the faculty of interpretation peculiar to the human mind, that see art."
Man Ray eventually came to see painting as an obsolete form of expression, which photography would replace once the public was visually educated. One of his admirers, Jean Cocteau, called him the "poet of the darkroom."
© Robert Leggat, 2000.