Tanja Ramm

In addition to participating in the Parisian art circles of the 1920s, Man Ray supported himself with portraiture and fashion photography for magazines like Vanity Fair and Vogue. As evidenced by his photograph of the model Tanja Ramm, studio work afforded him room to experiment. Man Ray made a series of views of Ramm that departed from his more conservative portraits by incorporating solarization, one of his signature darkroom techniques, which involved exposing developed but unfixed negatives to additional light. The success of this photograph led him to employ the technique for future portraits, including those of painter Giorgio de Chirico and Surrealist writer André Breton.