Artist: Man Ray
Museum: Oscar Niemeyer Museum (Curitiba, Brazil)
Technique: Gelatin Silver Print
In 1934, bound by contract to Harper’s Bazaar, Man Ray was able to reconcile his personal creativity with commercial restrictions. In the same year, Carmel Snow became Harper’s Bazaar chief editor and assigned the magazine’s artistic direction to Alexey Brodovich. Both were interested in attributing a prominent place to photography. The “tricks” which Man Ray wonderfully manipulates and which underlie his quality as “artist” photographer are then acclaimed: solarization, negative inversion, superimposition, mise en abîme and retouching with ink perfectly blend with those for which Brodovich esteems in order to revolutionize Harper’s Bazaar layout. These procedures are numerous. The first of them stems from a revolution in the viewpoint. Opposite to normal vision, that of an adult, which is frontal, one chooses an uncommon viewpoint, that of a “bird”. This emerges as one of the emblematic signs of “photographic modernity”, but is quite rare in Man Ray. We find it, for example, in this work: a wooden wheelbarrow up-holstered in leather, a singular object which heralds an artist’s intervention, serves as a seat for a woman with a splendorous gown. The angle of vision is, however, even more original. Far from flattering the image, as one could fear, it not only highlights the model’s relaxation, but also opposes the beauty of Lelong’s silver pleated party gown to the raw matter of Domínguez’s wheelbarrow.
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