Three Heads
Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky)
American, 1890–1976
1920
A gelatin silver print portrait in which Man Ray stages two men with an upside-down printed head pinned above them, aiming to unsettle the viewer by mixing living presence with reproduced imagery.
The image hits you with its tight crop and low, directional light that carves the men's faces into weighty, shadowed masses while the glossy, inverted photograph hovers like an uncanny third head.
Made at the crossroads of Dada and Surrealism, the work pushed portrait photography beyond straightforward likeness into staged, collage-like psychological experiments that helped redefine the medium's expressive possibilities.
Medium
Gelatin silver print
Dimensions
8 1/8 × 6 3/16" (20.7 × 15.7 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Thomas Walther Collection. Gift of Thomas Walther
Accession
1777.2001
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
