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Description: negative print, initialed by the photographer in pencil, his '31 bis, Rue Campagne Première, Paris XIVe' (Manford M6) studio stamp (crossed out), his 'Paris Ve, 8, Rue du Val-de-Grace, Téléph. Danton 92-25' (Manford M8) studio stamp, and numerical notations in unidentified hands in pencil on the reverse, matted, 1930

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Dimensions: measurements note 11 1/2 by 9 in. (29.5 by 22.8 cm.)

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Provenance: Collection of Juliet Man Ray, the photographer's widowPrivate Collection, acquired from the abovePrivate European Collection, acquired from the aboveAcquired by the present owner from the above

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Published: Other prints of this image: James Thrall Soby, publisher, Man Ray Photographs 1920 Paris 1934 (Paris and New York, 1934), pl. 51Arturo Schwarz, The Rigour of Imagination (New York, 1977), pl. 433Rosalind Krauss and Jane Livingston, L'Amour Fou: Photography and Surrealism (Washington, D. C.: Corcoran Museum of Art, 1985, in conjunction with the exhibition), fig. 233Emmanuelle de L'Ecotais, et al., Man Ray: Photography and Its Double (Centre Georges Pompidou, 1998), p. 144Janus, Man Ray: The Photographic Image (Woodbury, 1980), pl. 101Man Ray 1890-1976 (KunstHausWien, 1996), pl. 117Emmanuelle de L'Ecotais and Katherine Ware, Man Ray (Köln, 2000), p. 95Jill Quasha, Paris in the Twenties and Thirties (New York, 1986), p. 7Valerio Dehó, ed., Man Ray: Women (Bologna, 2005), p. 58

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Notes: This striking and surreal image of Jacqueline Goddard was included by Man Ray in his first book, the seminal Photographs by Man Ray 1920 Paris 1934. As of this writing, it is believed that there are 5 other early prints of this image extant. Three are in institutional collections: at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (currently on view in the Museum's exhibition, Framing the Century: Master Photographers, 1840-1940). The other two prints are in private collections. Man Ray's tireless creativity led him to experiment with every aspect of photography, and his innovative approach to technique--which encompassed photograms, solarization, and much more--expanded the vocabulary of the medium. Man Ray's negative portrait of Jacqueline Goddard is one of the most adventurous of the photographer's many images of women. Printed from an autochrome, as opposed to a conventional negative, the photograph is an illustration of Man Ray's desire to push photography in new directions. The autochrome was a color process, patented in 1904, that yielded a positive color transparency on glass. The soft colors and Impressionistic graininess of the autochrome initially attracted the attention of Stieglitz, Steichen, and Kühn, who worked extensively with the process shortly after it was introduced. While the autochrome was an ideal tool for a Pictorialist photographer, it was not an obvious choice for Man Ray, whose work was engaged equally with Modernism and Surrealism. Further, the autochrome had fallen out fashion by the time Man Ray used it to photograph Goddard. The autochrome, used in place of a negative during the printing process, yielded a photograph with reversed tones and a diffuse luminosity. Man Ray took the image a step further from the original by rotating it 90 degrees, so that Goddard--who had been lying down during the sitting--appears in the finished print to float in space with her hair streaming dramatically behind her. Through unconventional printing and innovative framing, Man Ray transformed the color original into pure Surrealism. Jacqueline Goddard (née Barsotti) (1911 - 2003) met Man Ray in Paris in 1927, when she was only sixteen years old. She fast became one of the photographer's favorite models. Though young, Goddard became an habitué of Paris's lively artistic and social circles, and was asked to pose by Matisse, Foujita, and other artists of the day.