Magraitis (Man with Guitar) (Magraitis [Homme à la guitare])

Maurice Tabard received his artistic education and began his photographic career in the United States before returning to his native France to photograph for fashion magazines. Around the time of his return, Tabard began experimenting with avant-garde techniques, such as double exposures, photomontage, and solarization, like in this eerie image of a man with a guitar. Solarization, also called the Sabattier Effect, is a process that can be enacted on either the negative, as seen here, or the print itself. The procedure involves exposing the light-sensitive negative or print to light while it is in the process of developing. This additional exposure results in a partial reversal of light and dark tones, with a silvery white line along sharp tonal gradients. Tabard’s use of such techniques led to his inclusion in surrealist and modern European photographic exhibitions in New York in the 1930s and a lasting association with the surrealists.