Man Ray "Rayogram" series

Man Ray was an artist, who lived from 1890 to 1976. he spent most of his life in Paris and was an influential force in the Dada and Surrealist movement in France. He always considered himself a painter and did a great deal of photography work in his later days as an artist. His photography work is immensely diverse ranging from portraiture style work to his famous "rayograms," which were produced through a camera less process involving the exposure of light on objects, which are pressed against photographic paper. Photograms are a unique facet of photography because the process requires no camera and it mimics, to a certain extent, modern day scanning techniques. Man Ray was a master at his craft and the image above is a perfect example of the boundless possibilities that Man Ray projected through his photographic work.    

This particular photogram, displayed above, projects a still life in a super natural and existentialist way. I believe the light was exposed through a piece of cloth and the objects placed in front of the light are rendered in a very mystical and surrealist way. The objects convey a still life painting and the form of these objects is conveyed in a very soft manner through the cloth. The lines of the objects are captured in a very unique way almost mirroring oil paint or pastel work. This is within a series of photograms that Man Ray composed throughout his career as an artist. These photograms of his illustrate the unique ways that one can project objects through photography.