Man Ray and Cartier-Bresson

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that Henri Cartier-Bresson and Man Ray made fundamentally different but important contributions to surrealist art. The author points out that Cartier-Bresson's work captured the surreal in the everyday; Man Ray, instead, created the surreal out of the ordinary. The paper relates that Cartier-Bresson captured the minutia in reality and converted them into surrealism, while Man Ray manipulated reality through techniques like solarization to distort reality into surrealism.

Table of Contents
Introduction
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Man Ray
Conclusion

From the Paper:

"Unlike Man Ray, Cartier-Bresson relied little upon the processes of development in his art. Instead, he remained true to his small 35-mm camera, which he regarded as unobtrusive, and quickly became "an extension of (his) eye". Further, Cartier-Bresson believed that to be effective, photography should be as instantaneous and natural as possible. As a result, Cartier-Bresson worked almost exclusively with natural light in order to capture the essence of his subject."

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