Man Ray's fabulous fashion photos, Mus­ée du Luxembourg Paris, 2020

Emmanuel Radnitzky (1890-1976)  was born in Philadelphia, the son of Russian immigrants. On moving to Brooklyn in 1911, his father took the surname Ray and Emmanuel took the first name Man. After studying draw­ing, he met Marcel Duch­amp in 1915, who brought him into the small circle of New York Dadaists. Frustrated at the fail­ure of his 3rd exhibit­ion at the Dan­iel Gallery NY, Man Ray set­tled in Paris and joined the Dada group, abandoning of painting.

Man Ray - Wooden Mannequin, 1925

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In the first instance, Man Ray entered fashion to finance his art, seeing fashion photography primarily as a mean of supporting his experimental artwork. When he moved from New York to Paris in 1921, he embarked upon various collaborations with the couturiers there including Vionnet, Lanvin, Chanel and Sch­iap­arelli, to finance his studio, brushes and paint. But right from the outset, he resolved to exp­loit the pot­ential for artistic expression within the context of commercial work. His first commission was for Paul Poiret, one of the city’s leading designers. Among the images from the session, the most famous are perhaps the striking portraits of a young Peggy Gug­genheim, draped in a glittering Poiret gown. But Man Ray’s favourite from the series was a Denise Poiret posing next to a Brancusi sculp­ture, which emanated light and combined art and fashion.” 

Kiki de Montparnasse holding an African mask, 1926
Photo credit: Dazed

Secondly Man Ray viewed fashion photography as an important way to spread his artistic ideas, Happily the fashion world was delighted by his surreal approach, and went on to champion some of his most experimental work. Take his famous Rayograph Technique which he dis­­covered accidentally switching on the light in his Paris dark­room, exposing the photo paper mid-development and creat­ing the dramatic contrast of light and dark. Vanity Fair caught wind of this soon af­ter Man Ray had created it, and in 1922 print­ed 4 of his rayog­raphs in a feature. Such mass-market dissem­in­ation would have thrilled the artist; before the age of tv and radio, such publicat­ions were swiftly becoming one of the most popular forms of entertainment. 

Man Ray, model, 1930

The Parisian fashion designer Paul Poiret encouraged him to work as a fashion photo­grapher, now that magazines like Vogue, Femina and Vanity Fair were de­d­icating more space to photography. Despite hav­ing no exper­ience, Man Ray practised and soon mastered the method, lending an artistic cachet to his images. Commissions soon flooded in, and in 1933 he became a permanent contributor to the American magazine Harper’s Bazaar. Offbeat or moving composit­ions, reframing and plays of shadow & light were some of the innovations that show­ed his complete talent. In the 1930s the fe­male silhouette chan­g­ed and fashion became a mass spectacle, luckily for Man Ray’s images.

Man Ray allowed for a wide overlap between his personal and comm­er­cial work, with many of the same motifs and stylistic flairs appear­ing in both. See his 1929 photo­graph of Lee Miller’s lips, which formed the basis of his 1936 painting Observatory Time: The Lovers, which he included as the backdrop to a fashion editorial for Harp­er’s Bazaar in Nov 1936. Other elements that showed up in both his private and commis­s­ioned imagery included a fas­cination with hands, a fondness for focusing on one part of the face or body. His pion­eering techniques eg his frequent use of double expos­ures, created interesting visual eff­ects.

His long career was defined by a pioneering quest for experi­m­en­tation and self-reinvention. He was a painter, sculp­t­or, print maker, photographer, filmmaker and poet, although he always des­cr­ibed himself as a paint­er above all else. And his oeuvre spanned Cubism, Futurism, Dada and Surrealism.

When WW2 hit Paris in 1940, Man Ray left for Hollywood, where he decided to abandon fashion photography for fear that his commercial reputation was eclipsing his artistic one. But he was proud of his fashion output, scouring America for back iss­ues of the magazines he worked for, he understood that he’d succ­eed­ed in prod­ucing work that went beyond the transitory quality that was typical of magazine work at the time. This was clear in the 1990 photography exhibition in NY, Man Ray/Bazaar Years: A Fashion Ret­ro­spective . He had raised the status of fashion photo­gr­aphy to that of a real art form, paving the way for younger photo­gr­aphers. 

Man Ray - Dress by Elsa Schiaparelli (solarised), 1930 

Man Ray’s fashion images have frequently been subject to reinterp­retation, from his famed early photograph of hands bearing Picasso-painted gloves (1935), which would go on to inspire Schiaparelli’s iconic black leather gloves bearing fake red nails a year later; to the 1999 ad for Jean Paul Gaultier's signature Classique, which mirrored the pose of Kiki de Montparnasse holding an African mask, replacing the mask with the torso-shaped bottle.

Man Ray, Glass Tear, 1932 

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When he first ent­er­ed the fashion sphere, Man Ray resol­ved to do something different. The resulting photographs had a last­ing impact on fashion photography as a medium thanks to Man Ray’s refusal to give up on his artistic ambitions, regardless of the form they took. A number of his landmark portraits eg Glass Tears were displayed in the Tate exhibition: The Rad­ical Eye: Modernist Photography 2017.

Man Ray is now so valued for his avant-garde approach that modern viewers forget that for 20 years of his career, 1920-40, he made his living largely from commercial fashion photography in Vanity Fair, Fren­ch Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, and with Paris’ most famous des­igners. Now see Man Ray and Fashion at the Mus­ée du Luxembourg Paris from Sept 2020-Jan 2021. His enduring infl­uence, nearly 100 years lat­er, remains as a powerful testament to the uniqueness of his vision. 

My main reference was Daisy Woodward at Dazed.