Constructed Realities: Photographer Research

Yasumasa Morimura

Yasumasa Morimura is a Japanese appropriation artist - he borrows images from historical artists and inserts his own face onto them, such as paintings by Frida Kahlo and photographs of Marilyn Monroe. He creates alternate people by making these hybrids of himself - alternate personalities, so to speak. If he were to be this person, have their body with his face, what would his life be like?

Man Ray

Man Ray was an American artist who lived most of his career in Paris. He was a part of boththe Surrealist and Dada movement. Interesting fact about the Dada movement - the name was decided by sticking a knife into a dictionary and the name that it landed on was dada. Man Ray is most well known for his photograms, which he named rayograms, after himself. He would place objects on photo-sensitive material and expose them to light. He would create interesting concepts by placing seemingly random objects next to each other in these compositions - one such included spoons and pearls. Man Ray would also vary the amount of time exposed for each of the objects in an image and sometimes move objects within the frame as well. Makes you wonder what the world is like if these objects have a significance when they are in the presence of each other, and what that significance would be.