The Freed Artist
One could almost say that Man Ray was a magician of sorts. He was able to capture the energy of cities and people in photographs and transformed the energy and light of the image into something completely new and innovative.
“I have finally freed myself from the sticky medium of paint and I'm working directly with light itself” declared the photographer. When 1922 struck, his experiments with the camera became known as “rayographs” which we will come back to later in this discussion. His work draws on the thoughts of the Dadaist, and Surrealist poets and of Cubist paintings and all types of modern thought in science that transcend reality into a place where anything is possible (Ray and Perl, 1988).
“I do not photograph nature,” he said. “I photograph fantasy.”
Curious Beginnings
Born as Emmanual Radnitzky to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents in Philadelphia in 1890, and oh what a time to be alive! The 1900s was a thought-provoking era (Manray.net, 2011). A time of innovation on a collective level. This is an exciting and pivotal time for Americans. The first wave of feminism was crashing over the shores of the patriarchy, washing pieces of the old system away. The energy of this movement established a sense, for all people, that freedom from the restrictive constraints of the system was possible and all one needed was a voice and a mission.
Emmanual was born just five years before Russia's invention of the telephone in 1895, who was created by the two-time Nobel Prize winner, Marie Curie (Manray.net, 2011). Many more inventions were occurring around this time, which illustrates the internal landscape of the people. Like young Emmanual, soon-to-be titled Man Ray, people in the 20th century explored newfound concepts of the unconscious and the primitiveness of elementary feelings, as professor Lagana surveyed in 2014 on Dadaism, Surrealism and the Unconscious. He goes on to say that their “absurdities” revealed their “discontent with society” and a complete “rejection” of the status. Their anger and frustration mostly occur after The Great War, as the governing bodies of the civilians had reared their ugly face, showing the world that civilians were not of their best interest. The government conscripted millions to a foreseen death and traumatic destruction. So why should we trust the government? What is their best interest? Money! Money and resources are their best interest. But you know that (Lagana, 2014).
What Is Dada
What you might not know however is that Dadaism is happening right now. Dada will continue to surge in the years to come, which Love examined in her 2020 article, ‘Why 2021 Will See a Resurgence of the Dada Art Movement.” Dada is a paradox of distorting reality to see truth and when the truth is shown, my goodness it is jarring, strange and confusing. In 2020, civilians, with hands tied behind their backs, watched the world turn to chaos and destruction as it had in World War 1. See, the Dada art movement comes from psychologically making sense out of confusion and aggression and representing illusions and distortions in an illustration and photography (Love, 2020). Thus, from the Australian bushfires burning Australia alive, to the harsh government mandates of COVID19 with its unemployment numbers parallel to that of the Great Depression, from the death of George Floyd igniting Black Lives Matter protests globally, and to the 2019 Donald Trump impeachment which would occur again in 2021, the system showed it's underbelly.
I encourage you to read Love’s article on Dadaism and its critical impact in today on an international scale, as it helps us make sense of this strange world cultivated by those megalithic companies that do not have our best interest at heart. You may have heard of Sigmund Freud? Perhaps Carl Jung? These philosophers highlighted a new form of thought, and for many people the search for new thinking had begun. Dada artists throughly employed their concepts of the unconscious (Jung, 2012).. Artists utilised automation in writing and drawing and so the process of creating a structured and realistic work of art was overtly discarded and replaced by “the expression of the unconscious” (Lagana, 2014).
With all that being said, I believe we can see Man Ray properly, in his artistic right. We can understand his place in the culture and his purpose in artistic expression, such as the powerful intention behind creating a name for himself, creating an ever-changing character of expression for the world to view. As a kid, Manny was his nickname which later on fashioned into Man as a first name (Jung, 2012). Transforming and evolving was just part of his nature for he was an artist in flow.
The Crazy Scientist
From painting, sculpture, film to prints, and poetry, Man Ray could create effortlessly within his favourite styles of Cubism, Futurism, Dada and Surrealism. He started off as a Cubist painter in New York and after 1915, he was mostly working as a Dadaist which he owes mostly to Marcel Duchamp, a man who fled World War 1 and brought the spirit of Dada from Paris to New York. Duchamp created “a kind of life ethic of the irrational” which was very much accepted in the New York art community. This “spirit” somewhat possessed Man Ray. On Bastille Day of 1921, Man Ray considered new horizons. So he arrived in Paris with packed bags and excitement in the air for this was to be his home for the next fifty years (Ray and Perl, 1988). Marcel and Man Ray spent a lot of time together, cultivating their self expression. As shown in the image below. They were creative minds that inspired one another.
Man Ray could be compared to a crazy scientist with a method to his madness and an obsession for experimentation. He emphasised “abstraction of images” by using his rayographs technique (Met, 2021).
The rayographs were done by “placing objects such as the thumbtacks, coil of wire, and other circular forms used […] directly on a sheet of further synthesised paper and exposing it to light” stated writer of Met Museum Man Ray art collection. Cameraless photography had actually been around since the 1830s by such artist Lazlo Maholy-Nagy, however Man Ray changed the production of the images via arrangements and strange combinations that created a surrealist abstraction (MoMA, 2017).
There's little we know of Emanuel and who he was before he became Man Ray. His personal privacy highlighted his outwardness of creative, political expression in a psychological debate. I find his privacy interesting as the Dada movement was interlinked with Futurism (Ray and Perl, 1988). Was Man Ray acting out his personal psychology by looking only to the here-and-now and future? I believe the answer is yes! And that goes to show how genuine he was as an artist by revealing his true self through the medium of photography, allowing others to believe in their personal politics and create a creative persona for themselves.
No Need To Be A Cog in the Machine
Man Ray's photography portrayed double meaning, from a sense of "loss" in the cold, stillness of the images, and then a sense of "gain" through the "perpetuation of that moment" as highlighted by Ray and Perl (1988). I must warn you that some of his photographs carried a violence, seemingly against women, as the themes were of bondage such as masked up women! However, despit those cruel depictions, his works like the Rayographs, can be an inspiration for fellow photographers to utlise in their photography. If working with digital camera then one can create images with his compositions in mind. Compositions like his 1933, Still Life image is a work of art that goes into my favourites of all time. This image that alerts the photographer to see photography less as a documentative medium and more as a process of artistic application and experiment.
We are deeply affected by the people who raised us and the community surrounding us and their agendas and fashion trends and ideologies. The government and their systems deeply impact how we see ourselves in relation to society. But, if we practise the art of self-belief in individualism as a great value, we can curate our likes and ideologies rather than have them curated for us, giving us the illusion of personal preferences and choice. We then recognise that we are not so much a “cog in the machine” as Marx put it, but rather a key to ignite one of the many ignitions within the machine. Thus! With the choice provided to activate your perpetuation of the machine, you can do so or you can pocket that key and stride off in your own direction.
Reference List
Jung, J. (2012). Man Ray. [online] The Art Story. Available at: https://www.theartstory.org/artist/ray-man/.
Lagana, L. (2014). Dadaism, Surrealism and the Unconscious. Symposia Melitensia No. 9, University of Malta, ISBN: 1812-7509.
Love, I. (2020). Why 2021 Will See a Resurgence of the Dada Art Movement. [online] TheCollector. Available at: https://www.thecollector.com/dada-art-movement-resurgence/.
Manray.net. (2011). Man Ray. [online] Available at: https://www.manray.net/.
Ray, M. and Perl, J. (1988). Man Ray. Aperture.
MoMA (2017). Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky). [online] The Museum of Modern Art. Available at: https://www.moma.org/artists/3716.
The Met (2021). Rayograph. [online] Metmuseum.org. Available at: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/265487#:~:text=Man%20Ray%20made%20his%20%22rayographs.
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