On display until 9 November 2025, Heide Museum of Modern Art has unveiled Man Ray and Max Dupain, a landmark exhibition that brings into dialogue the contemporaneous photographs of renowned American-born artist Man Ray (1890–1976) and eminent Australian photographer Max Dupain (1911–1992). This is the first major Australian exhibition to consider these two influential 20th-century photographers side by side.
Curated by Emmanuelle de l’Ecotais, Man Ray historian and Artistic Director of Photo Days, Paris, and Lesley Harding, Artistic Director of Heide Museum of Modern Art, the exhibition Man Ray and Max Dupain features over 200 photographs with a focus on the artists’ respective engagements with Surrealism.
“Man Ray was a revolutionary. His radical approach to photography, embracing chance, accident, and abstraction, redefined the medium,” said Co-curator and Artistic Director of Photo Days, Paris Emmanuelle de l’Ecotais.
“Seeing how these ideas echoed and evolved in the work of Max Dupain reveals an intriguing cross-cultural story of modernism and artistic rebellion.”
From the nude, still life and portraits, to fashion and advertising, the exhibition offers a rare opportunity to explore the intersecting yet distinct visual languages of two artists who shaped modern photography across continents.
Central to the exhibition is the transformative influence that Man Ray had on Max Dupain. A pioneering figure in the Dada and Surrealism movements, Man Ray transformed photography through innovative techniques such as solarisation and his iconic rayographs, camera-less images that blurred the boundary between abstraction and realism.
His influence reached Australian photographer Max Dupain, who, after encountering the book Photographs by Man Ray 1920–1934, decisively moved away from Pictorialism and started trialling the latest photographic practices and processes that would become a feature of both his creative and commercial output for the ensuing years.
Featuring key works such as Man Ray’s Noire et Blanche (1926) and Larmes de Verre (1932), alongside Dupain’s Solarised Hands and Flowers (c.1934) and Torso in the Sun (1941), the exhibition presents two masters of photography at their most inventive.
The exhibition also considers the artists’ creative and romantic partnerships, Man Ray with Lee Miller, and Max Dupain with Olive Cotton, revealing how these collaborations shaped their respective oeuvres and emphasising the often unsung contribution of women artists to Surrealism and artistic innovation.
“This exhibition continues Heide’s commitment to contextualising Australian artists within broader international modernist movements. In bringing together the contemporaneous work of Man Ray and Max Dupain, we illuminate a fascinating dialogue of influence, experimentation, and artistic vision,” said Heide Museum of Modern Art Director, Lesley Harding.
Accompanying the exhibition is a richly illustrated catalogue featuring essays by curators Lesley Harding and Emmanuelle de l’Ecotais alongside texts by Tamara Abramovitch, Judy Annear, Lana De Lorenzi, Helen Ennis, Shaune Lakin, Gael Newton, Antony Penrose and Susan van Wyk.
Man Ray and Max Dupain offers Australian audiences a compelling look at how two visionary artists, working worlds apart, redefined the possibilities of photography.
Man Ray and Max Dupain
Heide Museum of Modern Art, 7 Templestowe Road, Bulleen
Exhibition continues to 9 November 2025
Entry fees apply
For more information, visit: www.heide.com.au for details.
Image: Installation view, Man Ray and Max Dupain, Heide Museum of Modern Art, 2025 – photo by Ruby Taylor