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Man Ray, 1890-1976
Man Ray, an American artist who embraced modernism, Dada, and Surrealism, created this self- portrait in 1924. Moving between the United States and Paris, he worked in a variety of mediums and generated purposefully shifting identities. This image carries a strange sense of alienation and foreboding. Man Ray directs his intense gaze away from the camera and the viewer, and he appears with his tie askew, in the midst of arrested movement. One could chart a connection between Man Ray's efforts to both conceal and reveal himself and his stated desire to be always a "foreigner" and to have "complete freedom from social conformity." During this period, he was making photographic portraits of expatriates in Paris, including Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, and Sylvia Beach, in whose bookstore they all gathered. As Beach wrote in her memoirs, "To be ‘done' by Man Ray and Berenice Abbott means that you were rated as some- body." Abbott, whose self-portrait is included in this exhibition, served as Man Ray's darkroom assistant when he made this image.
Gelatin silver print, 1924 |