Man Ray

images by Man Ray

Man Ray was an American visual artist who spent most of his life in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada  and surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal. Above all he was best known for his pioneering photography and was a highly known fashion and portrait photographer.

Ray is also well know for his photograms which he called “rayographs” Throughout his career Man Ray didn’t expose many details of his life or family into the public, Ray didn’t even publicly acknowledge his “other name” which was Emmanuel Radnitzky. He was born in South Philadelphia, August 27, 1890.

From a young age Man Ray was displaying a range of artistic and mechanical ability’s, whilst still at school he used to educate himself by frequently visiting the local art museums in his area.

Double / multi-exposure images

Double / multi-exposure images are photographs created by combining two or more photos into a single image, which blends different elements, subjects, or moments together. This technique can add depth or movement to an image.

To create these images I used photos from the previous post on studio portraits and edited them in photoshop

To create this image I cut out the subject of the image and made a new layer and pasted him on top. moved the second copy of the subject to where I wanted and turned the opacity down. I also edited the original image a bit more to add a bit more contrast and make the effect of the double a bit more dramatic.

I thought that it would be cool to edit one of these images from when we did the motion blur photoshoot. As I thought that seeing the blur repeated would have a cool effect.

This image was a bit harder than the previous to edit as there was the blur as well and I copied it three time instead of two, I Used the eraser tool to smoothly blend these together as well as having it make the colour of the background correctly. Additionally I made the subject in the middle dark to add a bit more depth into the image.

This was an idea I had as the regular image just had the hands in his ears which I thought would look different if they were replicated and moved around the whole subject. One issue I ran into with creating this is that the lighting on the hands didn’t match the tone of the background, especially when doing the right side which is significantly darker than the left or even higher up on the right side. The way that I combatted this is by clicking on the layer of the hand I would like to change. Then by going to the top of the screen and clicking on image then adjustments, that allows me to lower the brightness and contrast on that single layer. So I then did that for the rest of the hand I would like to make darker to match the tone of the background.

Russian Constructivism

Alexander Rodchenko

Images by Alexander Rodchenko

 Alexander Rodchenko was a Russian and Soviet artist, sculptor, photographer, and graphic designer. He was one of the founders of constructivism  and Russian design.

Rodchenko was born in St Petersburg and moved to Kazan after the passing of his father in 1909. Rodchenko became an artist without much exposure to the art world, he main drew inspiration from magazines. He began his artistic studies in 1910 at the Kazan Art School where he met his future wife.

In 1921 he became a member of the productivist group, which advocated bringing art into everyday life. He gave up painting to concentrate on graphic design for posters, books, and films.

Rodchenko was the main influence for many of the 20th century graphic designers, for example American conceptual artist Barbara kruger took huge inspiration from Rodchenko’s work.

My Interpretation