Heide Museum Of Modern Art is presenting a unique photographic exhibition featuring American artist Man Ray and Australian photographer Max Dupain. Both were noted for their experimentation with photographic techniques and their surrealist imagery. There are more than 200 prints on display, and the subject matter includes still life, nudes, portraiture, fashion and advertising.

Walking through this exhibition, I found myself drawn more closely to the work of Dupain. He seemed more experimental and surrealist in his photography. His work is more compelling and hovers between reality and otherworldliness to a greater degree than Ray. By the mid 1930’s, Dupain made the transition from realism to more modernist values in his photography where light, pattern, framing, relations between objects and experimentation became more important.

Both artists experimented with solarisation - a process of extreme overexposure in a camera where bright areas appear black or grey in the final image - and photomontage. Both were romantically involved with, and influenced by women who were also talented photographers; in Ray’s case it was Lee Miller and in Dupain’s it was Olive Cotton who he later married.

In 1921 Man Ray began experimenting with photograms, also known as “cameraless” photographs which involved placing objects on photosensitive paper and exposing the paper to light very briefly in the darkroom. The paler areas are where the objects sat and the darker areas are the spaces around them, thus creating an inverse image. This technique enabled Ray to blur the boundaries between realism and abstraction. He used transparent materials in an effort to suggest alternative realities. He gave this technique the title “Rayographs”.

According to Lesley Harding, artistic director at Heide, these two artists operated in isolation on opposite sides of the world, they didn’t know each other and never met. “But they are working in the same sorts of ways, applying Surrealist imagery to their commercial photography, publishing in the same international journals and exhibiting in the same international salons for photography." It’s unclear if Ray was aware of Dupain’s work, but Dupain once wrote of Ray’s photography.

Dupain only ever photographed in black and white, believing that this enabled him to achieve a simplicity and directness, in addition to allowing the viewer to add their own interpretation.

The exhibition runs until 9th November.

References;

Heide Museum of Modern Art

The Guardian

ABC News

Ray & Dupain At Heide

Can The Arts Revive A Community?