Ellen Carey, a photography professor at the Hartford Art School, recently discovered that the avant-garde photographer Man Ray wrote his name in penlight in his self-portrait tilted Space Writing.

An article about the discovery was published online by Smithsonian Magazine. An excerpt from that article is below.

In 1935, the avant-garde photographer Man Ray opened his shutter, sat down in front of his camera and used a penlight to create a series of swirls and loops. Because of his movements with the penlight, his face was blurred in the resulting photograph. As a self-portrait—titled Space Writings—it seemed fairly abstract.

But now Ellen Carey, a photographer whose working method is similar to Man Ray’s, has discovered something that has been hidden in plain sight in Space Writings for the past 74 years: the artist’s signature, signed with the penlight amid the swirls and loops.

(Image above: Man Ray. Space Writing (Self-portrait) 1935 Gelatin silver print on paper (cropped version of original) 3 3/16 inches x 2 5/16 inches. Collection of Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick Main.)