Visiting Man Ray in Paris

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artist stamp verso

In 1950, German advertising expert, journalist, collector, and curator Leo Fritz Gruber founded Photokina – the world’s leading trade fair for the photography, video, and imaging industries – together with Bruno Uhl. In 1956, Gruber traveled to Paris with a friend, the architect Helmut Remmelmann. There he met the famous photographer Man Ray, with whom he maintained a professional and personal relationship for two decades. In 1960, Gruber dedicated a solo exhibition to Man Ray as part of the Photokina photo show in Cologne. In 1963, his publication Man Ray Portraits was released. Together with his wife Renate, he compiled an extensive collection of originals and documentary material on Man Ray’s life and work.¹
The two photographs show Remmelmann and Man Ray (on the right with an umbrella). The photograph was taken in Paris on Rue du Four, not far from Rue Férou in the 6^th arrondissement, near the Jardin du Luxembourg. Here, after his return from the US, Man Ray resumed working intensively in Paris. His studio on Rue Férou was a gathering place for the Surrealist scene at the time.²
The two seemingly casual photographs taken while crossing the street are therefore not merely an interesting chronological sequence of two images but rather possess a symbolic quality: the aging Surrealist in his old neighborhood, in a Paris that is already culturally transitioning into a new era. The melancholic end of the bohemian era.
(Christoph Fuchs, translated with DeepL)

Notes

1
Wikipedia, Leo Fritz Gruber (accessed May 28, 2026)

2
A la découverte de l’atelier de Man Ray, rue Férou (accessed May 28, 2026)