Man Ray presentation

This is the link to the presentation of Man Ray, a trascendental photographer:
Presentation
We were asked to do some presentations about famous and great photographers in history. Ekhi and I decided to take Man Ray. It waasn't our first choice (first we chose lachapelle but it was already taken), but we don't regret our choice as we were able to create some original and unique photograph in a Man Ray style.

And this is what we had to explain about him:

Man Ray borned the 27th of august in 1890 and died on the 18th of November 86 years later. He spent the most important parts of his life in New York and Paris, where he developed his art. These two places, are still very renowned for their glamour or love for the art and fashion, prove of this, for example, we have two of the most important fashion weeks that are celebrated in these cities. Man Ray’s creative life starts in New York, where he starts off getting inspired in the different expositions in the Alfred Stieglitz art gallery; and as a direct result of it, he organizes his first individual exposition in the Danielle Gallery in 1915. Another important fact about his life in New York, is that he married to Adon Lacroix, a poetry writer. In 1921, he settles in Paris, where he gives up on painting, as he assumes that the sale of his paintings is a failure, and he comes back to photography which was a great choice. 

Following the thing that we call “Found art”, Man Ray started focusing on surrealistic photos using that influence from the found art. Found art basically consists in making use of objects that we wouldn’t consider artistic to be used as models or to make sculptures with them. We also say that we can take sceneries that we wouldn’t consider artistic as a part of Found art.

In this photo, we can see a technique that Man Ray used a lot, the solarization. It’s a special type of illumination that happens when we use for the photo a light-sensible material. Apart from that, it uses the rule of odds with 7 fingers, and apart from that it’s also important to see the use of the close-up to the hands. It is a pretty simple photograph.

In our version, we kept it the same way, but we added to it a plant to give to it a more vivid style, still using the solarization technique, and as a result we created another simple photograph with that Man Ray style.

In this one, the first obvious fact is the symmetry, and it’s important to clarify the influence of the surrealism as he used the silhouette of a woman to create a violin kind of painting.

In our version, again, we added some more elements, as a dreamcatcher, but we kept the symmetry to maintain the essence of the photo. We also find in the background some more elements, especifically three paintings, and in this way we also respect the rule of odds mixed with the symmetry.

Eventually, in here, Man Ray created some leading lines with the hair, which is pretty interesting, and apart from that we also appreciate again the symmetry.

In ours, we added again surrealistic elements, in this case tweezers, and we maintained the symmetry but lost the leading lines in the hair, giving it a more a discontrolated focus. Indeed, we added then in the mid ground with the blanket, leading the lines to, in this case, me.