Mason Klein, curator of fine arts at the Jewish Museum, gives a tour of the exhibition Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention. Man Ray, as one of the iconic figures of the avant-garde of the 20th century, recast the concept of artistic identity - as a poet, as a painter, as a photographer, as a filmmaker, and an essayist.

When Albert Hotz, in the 1890’s, made photographs of Iran and collected the images taken by other photographers (Ernst Hoeltzer and Antoin Sevruguin, to name but the two most important ones), he had in mind to document the country and its inhabitants as much as possible. It is not suprising that Hotz, being an entrepreneur, would give much attention to indigenous products that might be useful to his activities and advantagehous to his commercial interests. Agricultural products (including opium), textiles, minerals, finance, transport and communications.

Russia was one of the first countries in the middle of the 19th century to take up the new invention of photography. It soon had a rapidly growing number of practitioners, both professional and amateur. As the technique became ever simpler and more accessible, its potential began to be fully exploited and photographs came to be part of everyday life in many layers of society. By the late nineteenth century a family without at least one cherished family portrait would have been rare.

During the 19th century the popularity of the miniature portrait was eroded by the invention of photography and its rapid spread after 1840, firstly as daguerreoptypes and later in other formats as they were introduced. The advantage of a photograph was that it was much quicker and cheaper than a painted miniature portrait.

This led to various ways in which the two skills over-lapped. At first glance this portrait of a lady looks like a painted miniature, but by reference to the extreme top and bottom left, one can see it is actually a photograph, which has been hand coloured with water-colour. Some early daguerreotypes were also hand tinted.