.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Something crawled across my foot in the darkroom and I let out a yell and turned on the light.
Thus began Lee Miller, Man Ray's artistic collaborator and lover, in a 1975 interview recalling her version of how the two artists discovered the solarization process. Miller continued, "I never did find out what it was, a mouse or what. Then I quickly realized that the film was totally exposed: there in the development tank, ready to be taken out, were a dozen practically fully-developed negatives of a nude against a black background . . . Man Ray grabbed them, put them in the hypo, and looked at them later . . . The background and the image couldn't heal together, so there was a line left which he called 'solarization.'"
While working with Miller, Man Ray made numerous photographs exploring the effects of solarization—the process by which an image recorded on a negative or on a photographic print is wholly or partially reversed in tone so that dark areas appear light or light areas appear dark. This image, part of a series of calla lilies produced in the 1930s, shows the thin black line that separates areas where reversal has occurred from areas where it has not.
Thus began Lee Miller, Man Ray's artistic collaborator and lover, in a 1975 interview recalling her version of how the two artists discovered the solarization process. Miller continued, "I never did find out what it was, a mouse or what. Then I quickly realized that the film was totally exposed: there in the development tank, ready to be taken out, were a dozen practically fully-developed negatives of a nude against a black background . . . Man Ray grabbed them, put them in the hypo, and looked at them later . . . The background and the image couldn't heal together, so there was a line left which he called 'solarization.'"
While working with Miller, Man Ray made numerous photographs exploring the effects of solarization—the process by which an image recorded on a negative or on a photographic print is wholly or partially reversed in tone so that dark areas appear light or light areas appear dark. This image, part of a series of calla lilies produced in the 1930s, shows the thin black line that separates areas where reversal has occurred from areas where it has not.