3.13. American avant-garde

In the 1920s, many artists and photographers made radical moves to overthrow traditional or "realist" arts in a bid to be more experimental. American photographers such as Man Ray, and later, Edmund Teske, wanted to explore the possibilities of photography. Man Ray brought surrealism to the medium, with little regard for narrative or the conventions of reality. One of his most interesting techniques was solarization, which he began to explore in 1929. Solarization was a darkroom effect established in the 19th centurya process by which a print was exposed to light while in the developer. Some images look as though they are almost completely reversed, with strange, light tones in the shadows, while high-key images exhibit dark haloes around the subject.

Solarized prints vary depending on factors such as the image's tonality and the stage of development and period of time for which the print is exposed to light. The critical effect is the tonal reversal in darker areas, and there are a few ways to emulate this quickly. Man Ray's images often had haloes around the subject, a rather different effect. So you need to approach digital solarization in two steps-make a tonal reversal that suits the image, then work on the halo. It's worth remembering that Photoshop does have a Solarize filter, under Filter > Stylize, but it offers little control. It is applied directly to an image layer, so be sure you work on a copy of your black-and-white picture. You can try Edit > Fade Solarize and experiment with Fade's blending mode. Also try inverting the image after applying Solarize. It's still rather hit or miss, however, so here we'll use a more advanced method.

I captured this pair of sunglasses, on a piece of paper, in late afternoon light. I overexposed by one stop to create a high-key image.

If your photograph is color, make it black and white by adding a Channel Mixer adjustment layer and checking the Monochrome checkbox. Using Red channel values disguised most of the texture of the paper beneath the sunglasses in this picture. Consider whether you need to adjust the image contrast. If so, click the "Create new fill or new adjustment layer" icon in the Layers palette and select Curves. Many of the solarizations of the 1920s and 1930s isolated the subject, so I dragged the curve into an "S" that hid most of the remaining paper texture. To add the tonal reversal, click the "Create new fill or new adjustment layer" icon in the Layers palette and select Curves. Click a point in the middle of the curve so a little marker appears and the midtones are fixed. Then drag the curve's bottom left corner up to the top left, so the curve forms a "U" shape. Adjust this to suit the imageI generally prefer more of a "W". To mimic the gentle, warm tone of the gelatin silver print, click the "Create new fill or new adjustment layer" icon in the Layers palette and select Curves again. Drag the Red channel curve slightly upward and the Blue channel slightly downward, and click OK. Try the midpoints from the Red and Blue channels shown here as starting points. Activate the image layer and use Ctrl/Cmd + Alt/Opt + J to copy it. This layer will be used to add the dark halo, so name it "Halo," and set its blending mode to Multiply. Drag the Halo layer up to just below the top layer in the layer stack. The toning layer from step 4 should be at the very top-it applies the tone to the Halo layer. Make the Halo layer into a heavy line drawing with Image > Adjustments > Threshold. Often this will result in stray black or white pixels, so a quick way to clean up the Halo layer is to apply a Gaussian Blur with a radius of 1, then apply a second Threshold adjustment to remove any shades of gray. With the Halo layer active, select the Magic Wand tool (W), ensure its Contiguous option is unchecked, and click a white pixel. Hit the Delete key. In the Layers palette, reduce the Halo layer's Fill Opacity (the setting just beneath the standard Opacity adjustment box) to 0%. Click the "Add a layer style" icon at the bottom of the Layers palette and select Outer Glow. Set the blending mode to Multiply and the color to black, then experiment with the Spread, Size, and Range sliders to create a smooth glow around the object. Click OK when you are satisfied with the result. Solarization is easyjust add a "U" or "W" shaped Curves adjustment layer to a black-and-white imagebut high-key images also feature haloes around the subject.