Homage to Man Ray, 1937

Title in pencil in lower left margin; signed and dated in ink on image lower right.

Provenance
Dupain Estate
Rex Dupain, the artist’s son Private collection, Sydney

Image size: 37.5 × 30 cm

Framed size: 58 x 49 cm

Condition
Minor creases.

Exhibitions
Man Ray and Max Dupain, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 6 August – 9 November 2025

Literature
Dupain, M., “Man Ray: his place in Modern Photography”, The Home, 1 October 1935

Sister Artwork
An example of this work is held in the Art Gallery of South Australia collection, acquired through the Contemporary Art Acquisition Fund of Visual Arts Board in 1980 (Accession number 801Ph9).

This solarised nude is a direct homage to the American surrealist Man Ray (1890–1976), whose technical experiments profoundly influenced Dupain’s practice. Dupain placed Man Ray’s importance for photography alongside Cézanne’s for painting; writing for The Home magazine in 1935, Dupain declared of Man Ray: “He is alone. A pioneer of the 20th century who has crystallised a new experience in light and chemistry”. The solarisation technique employed in this work – briefly exposing the negative or print to light to produce a halo-like effect – was famously pioneered by Man Ray. The image depicts a woman’s chest covered by her hands and makes Dupain’s debt to the American artist explicit. Dupain was more interested in technical experimentation than in Surrealism’s psychological and unconscious aspects. This work is one of several surrealist-influenced images Dupain created in the 1930s before shifting towards a more documentary style.