Man Ray Portraits Exhibition London

We recently featured  Man Ray in one of our blog posts here and now there is an exhibition of his portraits at The National Portrait Gallery

Man Ray Portraits is the first major museum retrospective of this innovative and influential artist’s photographic portraits.

Born Michael Emmanuel Radnitzky in Philadelphia in 1890, Man Ray initially taught himself photography in order to reproduce his own works of art. In 1912 he began to change the signature on his paintings from ER to Man Ray, and the Radnitzky family adopted this shorter surname.

Man Ray’s earliest photographs date from around 1916, when he documented his own Dada self-portrait and made portraits of Marcel Duchamp. Man Ray’s support and promotion of avant-garde artists was formalised in 1920, when American patron Katherine Dreier invited Man Ray and Duchamp to establish the Société Anonyme, America’s first contemporary art collection.

Focusing on his career in America and Paris between 1916 and 1968, the exhibition highlights Man Ray’s central position among the leading artists of the Dada and Surrealist movements and the significant range of contemporaries, celebrities, friends and lovers that he captured: from Marcel Duchamp and Pablo Picasso to Kiki de Montparnasse, Lee Miller and Catherine Deneuve.

Featuring over 150 vintage prints and key works from international museums and private collections, the exhibition also demonstrates Man Ray’s use of revolutionary photographic techniques and early experiments with colour, as well as surveying his published work in leading magazines such as Vogue and Vanity Fair.

7th February until the 27th May NPG  Full details of the exhibition can be found here

Photographer Profile ~ Man Ray

On my new favourite photography blog “Anthony Luke’s not just another photoblog blog” I find an article about Man Ray, less of an article more a largish number of pictures plus a bit of biog. I have been interested in Man Ray since I learned that Bill Brandt worked with him, and as Bill Brandt was the most important photographer to me in my teens I have held that interest. Here is a bit of what Anthony says and a few pictures, if you want to see them all go here

Man Ray (August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976), born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal. Best known in the art world for his avant-garde photography, Man Ray produced major works in a variety of media and considered himself a painter above all. He was also a renowned fashion and portrait photographer. He is noted for his photograms, which he renamed “rayographs” after himself.….MORE