“Man Ray, African Art and the Modernist Lens” at the Phillips Collection

The new exhibit at the Phillips, “Man Ray, African Art and the Modernist Lens” opened Saturday and I had a chance to stop by.  (I recommend joining for this reason– if you’re in the area and have 30 minutes to spare you can just swing through.)  My hopes were not especially high for the exhibit since I don’t know much about photography.  Knowing a lot about photography isn’t a prerequisite to enjoying most photographs, since they usually feature people or scenes that cause some sort of emotional reaction apart from the technical aspects of the shot (or it’s all intertwined to have an impact).  But most of the photographs in the exhibit are of staged objects, which I somehow thought would require an appreciation of lighting, focus, etc. etc.

The great thing about the exhibit, though, was that the Phillips actually had a lot of the objects on display next to the photographs, so it was very clear the effect Man Ray (and the other modernist photographers) wanted the object to have on the viewer.  Also, the Phillips displayed other images, like book covers and fashion magazines, that showed the effect the photographs had on pop culture in the 1920’s and 30’s.  Ray’s pictures were some of the first (Western) portrayals of African objects as art rather than anthropological artifacts.   

This untitled photograph features a statute of a queen from Cameroon:

Predictably, though, my favorites featured people along with objects.  This may be one of Ray’s most famous photos, “Noire et blanche.”  Interesting contrast between black and white, hard and soft, male and female: 

This one is “Mode au Congo (Adrienne Fidelin),” featuring Man Ray’s lover.  The checkerboard seems heavy-handed but it does add a nice effect: