benny: man ray, while not one of my absolute favorite photographers, did do a whole lot for the medium and surrealist movement itself. his photographs tended to come off as "accidents" when in fact he spent a lot of time on technique to acheive the effect of his images.
some of my favorite photographers that you may want to check out include: jock sturges (make sure you are not on a work computer when you view his stuff. there is a thread somewhere on this board that i started about him, if you want some links), cindy sherman (mostly self-portraiture that is extremely derivative), garry winogrand (street photographer) and anthony goicolea (does digital manips using cloned versions of himself as a white upper class adolescent male).
i also really admire my instructor's work. her name is masumi hayashi. she does panoramic photo collages where she captures a 360 degree view by taking many smaller photos and then puts them back together after the shots are developed.
if you are really interested in finding some good photographers, check out the only skin deep project at
http://www.icp.org/osd/preview/index.html.
rez: thanks so much for the nice comments. it's funny that you mention the second image, because it was the one that received the most negative (for lack of a better word) criticism in my class today. i plan on reworking this piece and will most likely end up removing my face from the bottom right, as it tends to crowd up the composition and take away from the image of my father. i think this is one that looks better on screen than in print.
as always, i'm looking forward to seeing more of your stuff.