In Paris in the 1930s, there were few artists as influential as Man Ray.
A pioneer of Surrealist photography, the American expat’s use of modernist techniques to create groundbreaking images revolutionised visual culture.
He photographed the likes of Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalà and Gertrude Stein, with his work appearing in the first Surrealist exhibition in Paris in 1925.
Ray’s influence extended all the way to Australia, where a local photographer was exploring similar artistic territory.
Max Dupain — best known for his iconic 1937 photograph, Sunbaker — would go on to become a leading modernist photographer of the 20th century.
In Sunbaker, Dupain captures his friend after a swim at Culburra beach on the NSW south coast.
For curator Lesley Harding — artistic director at the Heide Museum of Modern Art — the parallels between the two photographers’ work and their personal lives are clear.
Both experimented with light, form and abstraction.
And both engaged in romantic relationships with, and were influenced by, women who were talented photographers in their own right.
Ray was with American photographer Lee Miller, and Dupain with Olive Cotton, a fellow photographer who he married in 1939.
“There were some startling similarities in the techniques that they used, and they both obviously had a very keen interest in Surrealism at that time,” Harding says.
“[These are] two artists who are operating in isolation on opposite sides of the world — and they didn’t know each other, they never met — but are working in the same sorts of ways, applying Surrealist imagery to their commercial photography, publishing in the same international journals and exhibiting in the same international salons for photography.”
And now the artists’ work appears side-by-side for the first time in Heide’s new exhibition, Man Ray and Max Dupain.
Man Ray’s 1936 portrait of fellow Surrealist photographer Dora Maar. (Supplied: Galerie Natalie Seroussi)
The path to Surrealism
In 2023, the Heide presented a solo exhibition of Miller’s photography, Surrealist Lee Miller.
The show was a hit with the public. It led Harding to the work of Ray, a significant figure in Miller’s life.
Miller arrived in Paris in 1929 and persuaded Ray to take her on as his assistant, despite his initial refusal.
“She insisted, and they ended up having a very productive professional relationship, but also a personal relationship — they became lovers,” Harding says.
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Together, they established solarisation — the effect of tone reversal achieved by overexposing the photographic film — as a technique of modernist photography.
“[It’s] something they both used to startling effect in both their commercial photography and their artistic photography, giving black and white images a ghost-like or ethereal appearance,” Harding says.
Meanwhile, in Australia, Dupain became aware of Surrealism through international periodicals such as Modern Photography, which published two photographs by Ray, including a solarised portrait of Miller, in a 1931 edition.
While it’s unclear if Ray ever encountered Dupain’s photography, we are fortunate enough to know what Dupain thought of Ray’s work.
In 1935, Sydney Ure Smith, the publisher of Art in Australia and The Home magazine, commissioned Dupain to review a newly published survey of Ray’s work, Man Ray Photographs, 1920 –1934.
“It was very hot off the press,” Harding says.
The last major exhibition of Man Ray’s work in Australia was at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2004. [Pictured: Sleeping woman (1930) by Man Ray] (Supplied: National Gallery of Victoria)
Dupain, who was 20 years Ray’s junior, wrote a “very insightful and very thoughtful review of Man Ray’s work”.
He later told his biographer Helen Ennis that Ray appealed to him because he was a “radical”.
“He didn’t give a stuff for his contemporaries or his peers … he went ahead and did what he had to do,” Dupain said.
The Surrealist photographer inspired Dupain to experiment in the studio.
“Up until that time … his artistic photography was very much grounded in the prevailing photographic style in Australia at the time, which was Pictorialism, largely an English movement [characterised by] painterly images, often of landscapes, quite otherworldly,” Harding says.
“After he reviewed Man Ray’s book, he began using some of the techniques that he’d seen in the international journals and that had been very heavily adopted by Man Ray and started applying them to his artistic photography and even his commercial work.”
Ray’s innovations emboldened Dupain to experiment with his own work, Harding says. [Pictured: Homage to Man Ray (1937) by Max Dupain]
These techniques included cropping, framing, solarisation, photomontage and photograms (photographic images taken without a camera).
The decision by Harding and her co-curator, French Man Ray expert Emmanuelle de l’Ecotais, to present the two photographers’ work side-by-side highlights their similarities.
“The feedback we’ve had from visitors is that sometimes it’s really hard to tell — you have to look at the label to figure out whether it’s a Max Dupain work or a Man Ray,” Harding says.
Viewing the world through a similar lens
Similar to Miller’s influence on Ray, Cotton played a significant role in Dupain’s development as a photographer.
Dupain and Cotton were “teenage sweethearts” who spent summer holidays together, taking photographs with their Kodak Box Brownies. They both joined the Photographic Society of NSW in 1929.
While Dupain completed his apprenticeship under Sydney photographer Cecil Bostock after leaving school, Cotton completed an arts degree at university.
When Dupain opened his studio in 1934, Cotton joined him as his studio assistant, a difference in status that Harding says was telling.
“Australian art is every bit as good as what happens overseas,” Harding says. [Pictured: Birth of Venus (1939) by Max Dupain] (Supplied: National Gallery of Australia)
However, Cotton also developed her own photography practice during this period.
“It speaks a lot to the times — that he was the master photographer and she was [his junior], helping out and doing a lot of administration,” Harding says.
“She used the studio, particularly in the 1930s and early 40s, for creating these very interesting, very sophisticated modernist images that have a life of their own and aren’t necessarily in a direct relationship to Max’s work — they’ve got a different sensibility about them.”
A room in the Heide show presents work by the two couples — Dupain and Cotton, and Ray and Miller — together.
“It’s interesting to see, for example, a photogram by Max alongside a photogram [by Cotton] at a similar scale with similar use of natural and man-made objects in them. They were clearly talking about what was exciting them in developing their particular practices at that time,” Harding says.
“It was the same with Man Ray [and Lee Miller]. They were clearly riffing off each other, talking about stretching the boundaries and looking at the visible world through a similar lens.”
A forgotten legacy
By the end of the 30s, Dupain was running a successful commercial photography practice whose clients included David Jones. He’d also established a reputation as a leading modernist photographer.
But everything changed with the outbreak of World War II.
Dupain pictured in 1939. (Supplied: Art Gallery of New South Wales)
In 1941, Dupain joined the Royal Australian Air Force as a camoufleur, designing and building camouflage installations for the war effort, stationed in northern Australia and Papua New Guinea.
Dupain and Cotton separated in the same year but remained on good terms, with Cotton managing the studio in his absence.
Dupain’s approach to photography changed upon his return to civilian life.
“He turned his back on the more modernist, experimental work and focused more on documentary-style photography,” Harding says.
Max Dupain’s ‘forgotten works’
As his reputation grew in the postwar period, Dupain’s Surrealist work faded from memory.
“It wasn’t until later, when curators like Gael Newtown and Helen Ennis started doing surveys of Max’s work in the 70s, that a lot of this early imagery was brought to public attention. It had been forgotten in many ways,” Harding says.
She hopes the show deepens public appreciation of Dupain’s remarkable talent by demonstrating his versatility as a photographer.
“Dupain had this amazing experimental body of work that became a scaffold … for his later success,” she says.
The exhibition also dispels the myth that Australian art is in any way secondary to what’s happening elsewhere.
“We have tall poppy syndrome in Australia where we think international art must be better,” Harding says.
“I hope people can appreciate that people like Max and Olive were working at the top of their field and in parallel with others internationally.”
Man Ray and Max Dupain runs until November 9 at the Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne.