Man Ray (1890-1976)

Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky, 1890-1976) and Allen Ginsberg  in conversation (Peter Orlovsky) there in the background. The date, we’re surmising, is, on the second of Allen’s sustained Paris visits, in 1961. The location – the cellar of the English Bookshop (42 rue de Seine, Paris) where, as Jean Jacques Lebel, organizer, co-ordinator and provocateur,points out, “we held many a bilingual reading in the ‘Fifties and ‘Sixties.”

Here’s Jean Paul Fargier‘s 1998 tv documentary film on Man Ray – Man Ray monsieur machine coudre (Man Ray – Mr Sewing-Machine)

Here’s one of Man Ray’s own films, Les Mystères du Château de Dé ( The Mysteries of the Chateau of Dice) from 1929, and, from the previous year,L’Étoile de mer (The Sea Star), featuring the poet Robert Desnos and the legendary Kiki de Montparnasse

A little insight into Man Ray – his home-movies– (from the ‘Twenties and the “Thirties) – see here and here

Here’s a portfolio of Man Ray photographs, by Francisco Mundo

Adonism (sic) – Here’s a rare item – Some poems from Man Ray – see here 

We have the opportunity of hearing Man Ray’s own speaking voice. Here he is interviewed in 1972:

Questioner: I always have the feeling that the ‘Twenties and the ‘Thirties and the Dada movement and the Surrealist movement were..they were..it was a great deal of fun?
Man Ray: “No, not at the time. People look back to it, they think this was a marvelous period, romantic and all sorts of things but, no, it was very tense, it was very bitter, and there was no humor in it, but what we did was, really, to upset things, you know, but, subconsciously, to clear the way, as I said before, for something new which we didn’t know yet what it might be.”

& here he is from an undated (audio) interview):

“An object is the result of looking at something which, in itself, has no quality or charm. I pick something which in itself has no meaning at all. I disregard completely the aesthetic quality of the object. I’m against craftsmanship. I say the world is full of wonderful craftsmen but there are very few practical dreamers. In the early days in Paris, when I first came over, and I passed by a hardware shop and I saw a flatiron in the window, I said, there’s an object that’s almost invisible, maybe I could do something with that?”, what could I do to add something in it that was provocative. So I got a box of tacks and glued on a roll of tacks to (it) to make it useless, as I thought, but nothing is really useless, you can always find a use even for the most extravagent object”