Man Ray *

(Philadelphia 1890–1976 Paris)
Before and After, 1943, signed on the reverse, collage, silver gelatine print laid down on cardboard, 17.8 x 11.4 cm, framed
Provenance:
Michael M. Senft, New York
Galerie Kicken, Berlin
Private Collection, Germany (acquired from the above in 2009)

Exhibited:
Vienna, Kunsthaus Wien, “Man Ray 1890–1976. Photographien“, 1996/1997
Berlin, Neue Nationalgalerie, „Bilderträume. Die Sammlung Ulla und Heiner Pietzsch“, 2009/2010

Literature:
Rudolf Kicken, Man Ray 1890–1976. Photographien, Munich 1996, ill. no. 3

Man Ray was one of the founders of Dadaism in the United States and, after moving to Paris in the summer of 1921, joined the Surrealists led by André Breton. Initially, as a photographer, he focused on taking pictures of colleagues and friends – portraits to which he lent a magical atmosphere through the use of special lighting effects. Through Jean Cocteau’s influence, Man Ray rose to become the portrait photographer to Paris’s intellectual and artistic elite. Alongside this, he developed Rayography, a creative technique in which images are produced on light-sensitive materials through direct exposure using the contact process, entirely without a camera.
In 1940, Man Ray fled his chosen home, Paris, to escape the Nazis and would not return until 1951.

During his exile in America, he found himself in Hollywood, where he worked among other things as a consultant in the film industry. On top of that he remained true to photography as well as to his experimental spirit.
This is how Before and After was created in 1943. To compose it, Man Ray used a self-portrait from 1934, which he set within an expandable cover that opens out at the centre. The photograph, taken during his time in Paris, displays a surrealist wit; it is only at second glance that one realises the title refers to the shaving of his beard.
On a symbolic level, the work speaks a more serious language. Since his arrival in America, Man Ray had been haunted by the fear that he might fail to build on his success and recognition as an artist – a fear that, among other things, manifested in depression.
One might get the impression that in this work he is striving to preserve and protect the self he had in his Parisian days. This would further emphasise the already highly personal nature of the self-portrait.