Tristan Tzara
Man Ray
MAN RAY, 1921. PHOTOGRAPH ON SILVER GELATIN PAPER.
“I have finally freed myself from the sticky medium of paint”, said Man Ray, “and am working directly with light itself.” He was amongst the first to understand the importance of this liberation, for it was Man Ray, with a small group of others, who established photography as a medium for fine art. A multidisciplinary artist who had worked across different fields, when Tristan Tzara, the founder of Dada and the man pictured in this image, introduced Ray to photography, he felt at home. The sculpture hanging over Tzara’s head is one of Ray’s, a sword of Damocles that seems to spell certain death for the avant-garde genius, for this picture was taking on the precipice of movements. Dada was starting to fade, taken over by the fledgling surrealist artists, their sexually charged works represented here by the spectre of a nude women that looms over the old leader. Ray indeed used the camera as a canvas, not restricting himself to depictions of tangible reality but painting visions with light.