Man Ray and Max Dupain’s images on show collectively for the primary time in new Heide exhibition

In Paris within the Thirties, there have been few artists as influential as Man Ray.

A pioneer of Surrealist images, the American expat’s use of modernist methods to create groundbreaking photographs revolutionised visible tradition.

He photographed the likes of Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí and Gertrude Stein, along with his work showing within the first Surrealist exhibition in Paris in 1925.

Ray’s affect prolonged all the best way to Australia, the place an area photographer was exploring comparable creative territory.

Max Dupain — greatest identified for his iconic 1937 {photograph}, Sunbaker — would go on to develop into a number one modernist photographer of the twentieth century.

For curator Lesley Harding — creative director on the Heide Museum of Modern Art — the parallels between the 2 photographers’ work and their private lives are clear.

Both experimented with mild, kind and abstraction.

And each engaged in romantic relationships with, and had been influenced by, ladies who had been proficient photographers in their very own proper.

Ray was with American photographer Lee Miller, and Dupain with Olive Cotton, a fellow photographer who he married in 1939.

“[These are] two artists who are operating in isolation on opposite sides of the world — and they didn’t know each other, they never met — but 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.”

And now the artists’ work seems side-by-side for the primary time in Heide’s new exhibition, Man Ray and Max Dupain.

The path to Surrealism

In 2023, the Heide offered a solo exhibition of Miller’s images, Surrealist Lee Miller.

The present was a success with the general public. It led Harding to the work of Ray, a major determine in Miller’s life.

Miller arrived in Paris in 1929 and persuaded Ray to take her on as his assistant, regardless of his preliminary refusal.

“She insisted, and they ended up having a very productive professional relationship, but also a personal relationship — they became lovers,” Harding says.

Together, they established solarisation — the impact of tone reversal achieved by overexposing the photographic movie — as a method of modernist images.

“[It’s] something they both used to startling effect in both their commercial photography and their artistic photography, giving black and white images a ghost-like or ethereal appearance,” Harding says.

Meanwhile, in Australia, Dupain grew to become conscious of Surrealism via worldwide periodicals equivalent to Modern Photography, which revealed two images by Ray, together with a solarised portrait of Miller, in a 1931 version.

While it is unclear if Ray ever encountered Dupain’s images, we’re lucky sufficient to know what Dupain considered Ray’s work.

In 1935, Sydney Ure Smith, the writer of Art in Australia and The Home journal, commissioned Dupain to evaluation a newly revealed survey of Ray’s work, Man Ray Photographs, 1920 –1934.

“It was very hot off the press,” Harding says.

Dupain, who was 20 years Ray’s junior, wrote a “very insightful and very thoughtful review of Man Ray’s work”.

He later advised his biographer Helen Ennis that Ray appealed to him as a result of he was a “radical”.

The Surrealist photographer impressed Dupain to experiment within the studio.

“Up until that time … his artistic photography was very much grounded in the prevailing photographic style in Australia at the time, which was Pictorialism, largely an English movement [characterised by] painterly images, often of landscapes, quite otherworldly,” Harding says.

“After he reviewed Man Ray’s book, he began using some of the techniques that he’d seen in the international journals and that had been very heavily adopted by Man Ray and started applying them to his artistic photography and even his commercial work.”

These methods included cropping, framing, solarisation, photomontage and photograms (photographic photographs taken with no digital camera).

The resolution by Harding and her co-curator, French Man Ray skilled Emmanuelle de l’Ecotais, to current the 2 photographers’ work side-by-side highlights their similarities.

“The feedback we’ve had from visitors is that sometimes it’s really hard to tell — you have to look at the label to figure out whether it’s a Max Dupain work or a Man Ray,” Harding says.

Viewing the world via the same lens

Similar to Miller’s affect on Ray, Cotton performed a major position in Dupain’s growth as a photographer.

Dupain and Cotton had been “teenage sweethearts” who spent summer season holidays collectively, taking images with their Kodak Box Brownies. They each joined the Photographic Society of NSW in 1929.

While Dupain accomplished his apprenticeship beneath Sydney photographer Cecil Bostock after leaving faculty, Cotton accomplished an arts diploma at college.

When Dupain opened his studio in 1934, Cotton joined him as his studio assistant, a distinction in standing that Harding says was telling.

However, Cotton additionally developed her personal images follow throughout this era.

“It speaks a lot to the times — that he was the master photographer and she was [his junior], helping out and doing a lot of administration,” Harding says.

“She used the studio, particularly in the 1930s and early 40s, for creating these very interesting, very sophisticated modernist images that have a life of their own and aren’t necessarily in a direct relationship to Max’s work — they’ve got a different sensibility about them.”

A room within the Heide present presents work by the 2 {couples} — Dupain and Cotton, and Ray and Miller — collectively.

“It’s interesting to see, for example, a photogram by Max alongside a photogram [by Cotton] at a similar scale with similar use of natural and man-made objects in them. They were clearly talking about what was exciting them in developing their particular practices at that time,” Harding says.

“It was the same with Man Ray [and Lee Miller]. They were clearly riffing off each other, talking about stretching the boundaries and looking at the visible world through a similar lens.”

A forgotten legacy

By the top of the 30s, Dupain was operating a profitable business images follow whose shoppers included David Jones. He’d additionally established a status as a number one modernist photographer.

But all the things modified with the outbreak of World War II.

In 1941, Dupain joined the Royal Australian Air Force as a camoufleur, designing and constructing camouflage installations for the struggle effort, stationed in northern Australia and Papua New Guinea.

Dupain and Cotton separated in the identical 12 months however remained on good phrases, with Cotton managing the studio in his absence.

Dupain’s strategy to images modified upon his return to civilian life.

“He turned his back on the more modernist, experimental work and focused more on documentary-style photography,” Harding says.

As his status grew within the postwar interval, Dupain’s Surrealist work light from reminiscence.

“It wasn’t until later, when curators like Gael Newtown and Helen Ennis started doing surveys of Max’s work in the 70s, that a lot of this early imagery was brought to public attention. It had been forgotten in many ways,” Harding says.

She hopes the present deepens public appreciation of Dupain’s outstanding expertise by demonstrating his versatility as a photographer.

The exhibition additionally dispels the parable that Australian artwork is in any manner secondary to what’s taking place elsewhere.

“We have tall poppy syndrome in Australia where we think international art must be better,” Harding says.

“I hope people can appreciate that people like Max and Olive were working at the top of their field and in parallel with others internationally.”

Man Ray and Max Dupain runs till November 9 on the Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne.