Man Ray et la mode exhibition catalog
The catalog Man Ray et la mode was published on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name, shown first in Marseille in 2019 and in Paris in 2020. It focuses on the photographic work created by Man Ray for fashion magazines, shedding a new light on the artist’s works anchored in the surrealist artistic movement.
Anaïs Lancrenon worked on the design of the book by discovering some acquaintances between the productions of Man Ray and Roger Excoffon’s typefaces. In fact, Man Ray designed a spiral-shaped lampshade in 1921 that finds an echo in Excoffon’s emblematic 3D typeface Calypso. The aesthetic process of these two artists, working on the balance between black and white, the density of textures and rasters, ended up being very similar. This insight motivated Anaïs Lancrenon to use Belafonte, a contemporary adaptation of Calypso by Loïc Sander, to give a strong identity to the cover of the book.
On the other side, it was also important to restore an aesthetic close to 1930's Harper’s Bazaar, the main fashion magazine for which Man Ray worked at the time. In order to reach this aspect, the designer made another strong typographic choice by using Trianon, also designed by Loïc Sander and distributed by Production Type. Trianon is inspired by Didot typefaces, especially their smallest cuts (6 points), which show an unsuspected versatility. In this catalog, Trianon acts as an updated Didone, whose elegance is usually associated to the glossy paper of fashion magazines, while at the same time offering great legibility for a book composed of historical essays.
