About the Artist Man Ray (American, 1890–1976)
Real name: Emmanuel Radnitsky
He was born in Philadelphia, grew up in New Jersey and became a commercial artist in New York in 1910s. He began to use the name Man Ray in 1912. He initially taught himself photography in order to reproduce his own works of art, which included paintings and mixed media. In 1921, he moved to Paris and set up a photography studio to support himself. There he began to make photograms, which he called "Rayographs." (a photographic image made by placing objects directly onto the surface of a photosensitive material such as photographic paper and then exposing it to light). Shortly before World War II, Man Ray returned to the United States and settled in Los Angeles from
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In this work, Model’s beautiful but sentimental eyes are looking upwards away from the camera, which shows her puzzled feeling, while several shinning teardrops left below her eyes. All of these made me wonder what happened to her, why she was so sad. Is that because her cheated love or the despair of her life. These visual impacts were unprecedented. First, as I can see the whole picture was only a part of face, this kind of composition was rare and unique at that time. Next, in order to get this intensive artistic effect, Man Ray broke the traditional method of real record. He brought five crystal glasses to set well with the lighting and then started to shoot, instead of shooting the true tears. It was his initiative exploration, he was developing his interest in the real and unreal by challenging the meaning of still-life photography tradition. At the same time, at rhis close-up shot, Man Ray broke through the distance of between the photographer and subject. He pushed his camera closer to the model and even put it under the model’s face. By this, he abandoned all the other extra objects to maximize the view of some small part, which made a strong visual impact. It is common used in present photography and films as well. However it was a big revolution lead by Man Ray in 1930s.
Also, regardless of these