Man Ray, Juliet and the Non-Euclidian Object, ca. 1945
(See what happens to people when they go to Hollywood?)
Photographer of the Week: Man Ray’s (his photographs of Jacqueline Goddard)
“In an interview with Jacqueline Goddard some years later she described how she walked with him around Montparnasse cemetery on a rainy night not long after Lee Miller left him, listening to his threats of murder and suicide as a pistol clinked in his raincoat pocket; she saw Kiki begging in the Montparnasse cafes where she once reigned as queen, supposedly to pay the gas and light bills but actually to buy cocaine; she visited him in his last home, on rue Ferou, and watched as, unnoticed by the invalid Ray or his near-blind wife Juliet, the dealers and admirers slipped his more portable prints and objets under their fashionably flowing overcoats.”
—Some dude’s kind of great blog post on Man Ray
Photographer of the Week: Man Ray (his images of Jacqueline Goddard)
“When Man Ray presented her with a book of his photographs, he proposed the inscription: “To the most beautiful girl I have ever photographed”; she demurred. So he suggested, “To the only one I did not sleep with”; Jacqueline said that this would compromise his other models. Likewise, she rejected: “To the most inspiring one” as “a compliment for me, but rude to others.” In the end he had to settle for “With all my love, Man Ray.”
Photographer of the Week: Elliot Goldstein
A self portrait from his “Smoker” series.
(It reminds me of a rayograph by Man Ray.)
Icon of the Week: Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven
This photograph by Man Ray, The Coat Stand, isn’t of a one-legged doll. It’s of Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhaven… psych!
If I were brilliant, I would give a witty critical theory reading of the photograph. I would speak of the neurasthenic, the automaton, the doubling, the sense of unheimlich. I would speak of the First World War, my second favorite war ever (oh the perversity of sequential naming!). To end, I would bring it all back in some inexplicit but deeply thoughtful way to Benjamin or Adorno. Fortunately for you philistines, most of whom I lost in the first sentence of this posting, I’m not brilliant.
So instead I’ll close my week with the Baroness, on her final day, this day, with some thoughts on her impersonators.
