Man Ray films

Man Ray, born as Emmanuel Radnitzky in 1890 in America, was primarily known as an avant-garde photographer achieving much critical acclaim for his work. He left America for Europe in 1921 where Man Ray constantly shifted in his use of mediums, drawing on the relationship between his disciplines of sculpture, painting, photography and cinema to further inform the content of his work. Although mostly known for his photographic work, it was his film work that was to remain central to his practise. Ray’s observations provoked by the use of different mediums informed his cinematic work and vice versa. This inventive and eclectic approach allowed him to discover the intrinsic qualities of light, “transgressing the limits of the ordinary”, and avoiding cliche whilst constantly reinventing his work. Man Ray didn’t like the popularist narrative represented in most films and preferred simply to bring the still life subjects of his photos and sculptures to life by putting them in a format that set them in motion. As well as 11 previously unreleased short ‘autobiographical’ films, this video contains the four films that brought Man Ray into notoriety as an avant-garde film maker: Le Retour a la Raison (which initially screened with Richter’s Rhythmus 21 and Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand’s Manhatta), Emak Bakia, L’Etoile de Mer and Les Mysteres du Chateau du de. All films contain what are now historical references to the 1920’s that serve to describe cubism, dadaism and surrealism. (For example, the cubist garden created by Gabriel Guevrekian with the surrounding furniture and sculptures being made by the artists of the day, musicians like Fats Waller and Leopold Stokowski (playing Erik Satie’s compositions) also feature amongst others.