Man Ray - Les Larmes, 1932

Man Ray. Les Larmes, 1932.

'Copyright 2001 Man Ray Trust, Paris / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn' on the bottom back.
Total dimensions: 36.5 x 28.2 cm on semi-gloss paper.
Fine condition.

In this 1932 photograph, Man Ray constructs an image as cold as it is poignant. The open eyes of a model (probably the actress Kiki de Montparnasse), heavy with mascara and directed toward an invisible point, are streaked with glass tears that do not flow, but have been carefully arranged. The deliberate artificiality of the tears—small glass spheres—transforms emotion into sculpture, and the human face into a surreal object.

Les Larmes (The Tears) is one of the most emblematic examples of Man Ray's avant-garde approach, which fuses photography, sculpture, performance, and poetic gesture. Through this composition, pain becomes aesthetic and melancholy becomes artifice: the emotion is contained, ordered, even decorative, yet at the same time disturbing.

Man Ray stands as one of the foundational figures of 20th-century photography. An inventor and visionary, his influence resonates alongside Henri Cartier-Bresson, Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Robert Capa, Elliott Erwitt, Walker Evans, Alfred Stieglitz, Diane Arbus, Cindy Sherman, Irving Penn, Robert Mapplethorpe, Richard Avedon and other artists who reshaped the medium.