Man Ray

Man Ray (1890–1976), born Emmanuel Radnitzky in Philadelphia, was an American artist who spent most of his adult life in Paris and was a central figure of both Dada and Surrealism. He moved to New York in 1913, where he encountered Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia and began to develop the conceptual and irreverent practice that would define his career. He moved to Paris in 1921 and became an influent part of the Surrealist circle around André Breton.

His practice ranged across painting, photography, object-making, and film. He invented the rayograph — a photographic image made without a camera by placing objects directly on light-sensitive paper — and produced an extensive body of fashion and portrait photography for Vogue and other major magazines, his commercial and autonomous work feeding each other throughout his career. His objects — the clothes iron embedded with nails (Gift, 1921), the metronome with a cut-out eye glued to its arm (Object to Be Destroyed, 1923) — belong to the canonical works of Dada. His films — Emak-Bakia (1926), L'Étoile de mer (1928), Le Mystère du Château de Dés (1929) — were among the most adventurous moving-image works of the 20th century. He left for New York during the Second World War and returned to Paris in 1951, where he remained until his death. His work is held by MoMA, Tate, the Centre Pompidou, and major collections internationally.