"I paint what cannot be photographed, that which comes from the imagination or from dreams, or from an unconscious drive"
About this Quote
A photographer claiming he paints what cannot be photographed is a provocation with a grin: Man Ray is picking a fight with the idea that the camera is an objective truth machine. Coming from a figure who helped define modernist photography, the line reads less like medium envy and more like a deliberate jailbreak. He’s arguing that the real frontier isn’t sharper focus or better exposure; it’s the territory where images stop being receipts and start being symptoms.
The intent is to redraw the map of artistic legitimacy. Photography, in the early 20th century, was still litigating its status as art, often by borrowing painting’s seriousness or by touting its mechanical precision. Man Ray flips the script. He doesn’t apologize for leaving the camera behind; he frames it as a necessity when the subject is interior life: dreams, compulsion, the irrational. That “unconscious drive” is doing heavy lifting, nodding to Freud-era fascination and the Surrealist project of making desire visible without taming it into narrative.
Subtext: even photographs are never purely “photographed.” Man Ray’s own practice (rayographs, solarization, darkroom manipulation) treated the camera and lab as instruments of invention, not documentation. So when he says he paints what can’t be photographed, he’s also quietly expanding what photography can be. The line positions the artist as translator of the unseen, insisting that modern image-making is less about capturing reality than about manufacturing a new one - and admitting, with bracing honesty, that the engine behind it may be unconscious rather than noble.
The intent is to redraw the map of artistic legitimacy. Photography, in the early 20th century, was still litigating its status as art, often by borrowing painting’s seriousness or by touting its mechanical precision. Man Ray flips the script. He doesn’t apologize for leaving the camera behind; he frames it as a necessity when the subject is interior life: dreams, compulsion, the irrational. That “unconscious drive” is doing heavy lifting, nodding to Freud-era fascination and the Surrealist project of making desire visible without taming it into narrative.
Subtext: even photographs are never purely “photographed.” Man Ray’s own practice (rayographs, solarization, darkroom manipulation) treated the camera and lab as instruments of invention, not documentation. So when he says he paints what can’t be photographed, he’s also quietly expanding what photography can be. The line positions the artist as translator of the unseen, insisting that modern image-making is less about capturing reality than about manufacturing a new one - and admitting, with bracing honesty, that the engine behind it may be unconscious rather than noble.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
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