In addition to participating in the Parisian art circles of the 1920s, Man Ray supported himself with portraiture and fashion photography for magazines like Vanity Fair and Vogue. As evidenced by his photograph of the model Tanja Ramm, studio work afforded him room to experiment. Man Ray made a series of views of Ramm that departed from his more conservative portraits by incorporating solarization, one of his signature darkroom techniques, which involved exposing developed but unfixed negatives to additional light. The success of this photograph led him to employ the technique for future portraits, including those of painter Giorgio de Chirico and Surrealist writer André Breton.
Date
Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.
Travis, David. 1976. “Photographs from the Julien Levy Collection: Starting with Atget.” Exh. cat. p. 62, cat. 112.
Greenough, Sarah, Joel Snyder, David Travis and Colin Westerbeck. 1989. “On the Art of Fixing a Shadow: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Photography.” Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art/The Art Institute of Chicago. p. 289, cat. 228.
De Salvo, Donna. 1997. “Staging Surrealism: A Succession of Collections 2.” Exh. cat. Wexner Center for the Arts, The Ohio State University. p. 54.
Wood, James N. 2000. “Treasures from The Art Institute of Chicago.” Hudson Hills Press, Inc. p. 268.
Art Institute of Chicago, “Photographs from the Julien Levy Collection: Starting with Atget,” December 11, 1976–February 20, 1977; traveled to the International Center of Photography, New York, April 21-May 29, 1977; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, November 4-December 18 1977; Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts, January 13-Ferbruary 26, 1978; Lakeview Center for the Arts and Sciences, Peoria, Illinois, March 16-April 30, 1978; and Cincinnati Art Museum, November 17-December 24, 1978. (David Travis)
Chicago, Illinois, Art Institute of Chicago, “A History of Photography from Chicago Collection,” April 24–June 6, 1982.
Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art, “On the Art of Fixing a Shadow: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Photography,” May 7–July 30, 1989; traveled to The Art Institute of Chicago, September 16–November 26, 1989; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, December 21, 1989–February 25, 1990.
Columbus, Ohio, Wexner Center for the Arts, “Staging Surrealism: A Succession of Collections 2,” September 20, 1997–January 4, 1998.
Paris, France, Centre Georges Pompidou, “Man Ray: La Photographie a l’Envers,” November 18, 1998–January 24, 1999; traveled to Paris, France, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, April 28–June 29, 1998.
Art Institute of Chicago, “A Mind at Play,” June 14–September 7, 2008. (David Travis)
Art Institute of Chicago, “Photography on Display: Modern Treasures,” May 9–September 13, 2009. (Matthew S. Witkovsky, Elizabeth Siegel, and Katherine Bussard)
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