Wk 4: Artist Study // Manray & Eikoh Hosoe

Focus: Texture & Positive/Negative Space

Man Ray
Born in the USA Man Ray (an alias draw from his own name) spent half his life in America and the other half in France. His journey as an artist started as a painter working in cubism and pre-surealism.

This is one of his first images: taken with a long exposure (about 30 minutes) it captures a work his friend and artist Marcel Duchamp had been working on.

Texture: The texture in this image of the dust is very clear from the long exposure. Although it is hard to know what the image is at first glance, it looks a bit like a shot taken from a plane high in the sky of fields and fences but the detail of the dust pieces of the left make it confusing.

Rayograph - created without a camera. This way of working allowed him to simply work with light and create the shapes he wanted using objects.

Negative/Positive Space: This image was created (I believe) by objects being placed directly onto photographic paper and then exposed to light. While the space is probably pretty equal between the black and white, the positive nature of the shapes created in white are made all the more positive considering there is almost no tones between the black and white.




Eikoh Hosoe
Japanese Photographer Hosoe explored his practise of capturing his subject matter thoughtfully and with a fair for images that were somewhat experimental. Not just taking an image of a person, he seems to think more conceptually than that. Using the environment around to help tell the story. His techniques using high contrast, leading lines, experimental vantage points, rule of thirds (many falling perfectly on the intersecting points), high shutter speeds and pattern.

Negative Space: The subject in this image is place of the bottom left hand bottom intersecting line with almost nothing in the rest of the frame making this women the clearly defined focus. Your eye is immediately drawn to her and the light in the image is constructed so that there is a circle centering on the woman which almost excludes the only other element in the frame.

Negative Space & Texture: This image brings together texture with the leaves of the bush and negative space again the use of the leaves filling up the negative space in the frame.