Developing The Art Of Photography: 'Man Ray In The Age Of Electricity'

HUNTINGTON, N.Y.

:"When they said I was ahead of my times, I said, 'No I'm not, I'm of my time, you are behind the times,"' Man Ray once said. And his times - from the 1920s until the mid-1970s - were electrifying if not, in the beginning at least, electrified.

Man Ray, the quintessential American artist in Paris, lived in Montparnasse, mingling with the greatest names of the century from 1921 right up until the eve of World War II. Long before returning to America, Man Ray had not only made photography an accepted artistic medium, he had also defined modern fashion photography, made short films and captured in his lens the most noted artists, designers, patrons and dealers of an era. He had been Dada, Surreal and a fierce individualist. Even though he once said, "To be successful, art must be unsaleable," he never seemed to have experienced it, except perhaps for the short while he was trying to make a living painting, just before light-sensitive paper became his canvas and the lens his brush.

Remarkably, accidents seemed to play an important role in both Man Ray's migration from painter to photographer and his photographic innovations. One notable example is the portrait of the Marquise Luisa Casati in which a blurred image gives her three eyes. Man Ray considered the mistake a throw-away. Casati loved the duality and circulated the prints throughout Paris, spurring Man Ray's career as a society photographer.

Intensely gifted, endlessly curious and working with the compulsion that is creativity's métier, Man Ray cleverly maneuvered circumstance. In his hands, accidents of fate became career makers and social catapults. Darkroom mishaps quickly became tools for creating art, as the show "Man Ray in the Age of Electricity" at the Heckscher Museum of Art clearly demonstrates.

The show - which runs through August 13 - features 50 rare images in which the incandescent bulb was introduced as a component in the notoriously lights-off environment of the darkroom. The results became the techniques known as "rayographs" and "solarization."

According to Dr Kenneth Wayne, curator, "This is the first show to combine rayographs and solarization. At the time Man Ray started working, electricity wasn't a standard feature in Paris. He was lucky enough to find a room in the Hotel des Ecoles, one of the first fully electrified buildings. Up until then gas was the main utility."

Commenting on the very name Man Ray, Wayne said, "He was born Emmanuel Radnitsky and shortened it to Man Ray, like a light beam or ray of light. I think light had been of interest to him his entire life." Indeed, his early paintings demonstrate a keen interest in the cast shadow. He seems to have viewed it as a legible outline that was also varied in form.

"With rayographs," Wayne explained, "Man Ray put objects on light-sensitive paper and turned the lights on and off really quickly. Solarization was created by turning the lights on during the development process."