Man Ray

From multiple exposure and solarization to creating his own brand of photograms termed “rayography”: Man Ray’s innovations and imagery shook avant-garde Paris to its core. Breaking down boundaries between photography, poetry, and design to create ethereal expressions, the modernist pioneered a new chapter in the history of camerawork and art.

Man Ray, multitalented master of modernist imagery

Man Ray (1890–1976) was a polymath modernist, working in painting, sculpture, film, printmaking, and poetry. But it was his work in photography, with nude studies, fashion work, and portraiture that saw him pioneering a new chapter in the history of camerawork and art.

With a wide-ranging collection of both his famous and lesser-known works, this monograph gives a vivid overview of Man Ray’s multifaceted practice and photographic legacy. It traces Ray from his artistic beginnings in New York through to his central role in the Parisian avant-garde, where he featured in the first Surrealist exhibition with Jean Arp, Max Ernst, André Masson, Joan Miró, and Pablo Picasso and produced such now iconic works as Noire et blanche and Le Violon d’Ingres. Through numerous examples of still life, portraiture, and beyond, we see how Ray constantly experimented with new techniques, pushing photography out of its documentary domain into ethereal, poetic expressions through multiple exposure, solarization, and the particular brand of photograms he wittily termed “rayography.”

The author

Katherine Ware is a curator of photography at the New Mexico Museum of Art. Her publications include works on Man Ray and László Moholy-Nagy.

The editor

Manfred Heiting is an internationally acknowledged designer, curator, and expert on and collector of photographs and photobooks; he lives in Malibu and Brussels. He is a founding member of the J. Paul Getty Museum Council and since 2016 UCLA Distinguished Lecturer in the Humanities. He is editor and designer of Deutschland im Fotobuch, The Soviet Photobook, and The Japanese Photobook and co-editor and designer of Autopsie: Deutschsprachige Fotobücher 1918–1945.

Man RayHardcover, 14 x 19.5 cm, 0.36 kg, 192 pages