Man Ray
(1890 - 1976)
Man Ray was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on August 27, 1890. In 1897, his family moved to Brooklyn, New York. In 1904, while in high school, Ray learned freehand and industrial draughtsmanship. In 1908, Ray was offered a scholarship to study architecture, which he turned down. During this time, he began taking courses in drawing and water-color.
at the Ferrer Center. In 1911, Ray moved to Manhattan after meeting Alfred Stieglitz, but moved back to Ridgefield, New Jersey the following year, where he began to work as an advertising draughtsman for a publisher of maps and atlases. In 1914, Ray married poet Adon Lacroix (Donna Lecoeur), and officially changed his name to Man Ray.
During the fall of 1914, Ray met French avant-garde artist Marcel Duchamp, who was then living in New York and had his first solo exhibition at the Daniel Gallery, where he showed a collection of sketches and thirty paintings. In 1915, Ray purchased his firt camera and soon began using it to explore new avenues of creativity. In 1915, Ray became an active member of the New York Dada movement. His artwork is difficult to categorize since he was influenced by his associations with Duchamp, Dadaism, Cubism, and Surrealism. He made photographs, film, paintings, and found-object sculptures with interchangeable fluency and innovative skill. Man Ray is best known for his work as a Surrealist. In 1919, Ray separated from his wife and in 1920 began collaborating with Marcel Duchamp and attempted to make an anaglyphic movie with two cameras. In November of that year he created his first rayograph, also known as a photogram, which depicted a silhouette upon paper without the use of either a negative or a camera. Ray's avant-garde activity began during the war, while he was still in New York.
In 1921, Ray traveled to Paris and the following year was commissioned by Paul Poiret to photograph his designs. In 1924, Ray joined with Paris dada, met Andre Breton and went with him into the photogram. Ray's series "Rayograms;" and solarized portraits distinguished him as one of the medium's unique, iconoclastic talents. In 1931, Ray was hired by a French electric company to create a portfolio of Rayograms promoting the use of their product. Entitled "Electricite," the portfolio contained ten photogravure plates in an edition of five-hundred. Ray's most significant work was created while living in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s.
Man Ray generally took sexually significant objets for his rayographs and played with the X-ray-like qualities of the image to suggest that the photograph could penetrate solid matter and produce a kind of je-ne-sais-quoi. During the 1930s, he also met the famous French model Kiki de Montparnasse, of whom he made striking portraits, along with other celebrities of the Parisian avant-garde, including Gertrude Stein and Jean Cocteau. By 1923, Man Ray was an established photographer working for fashion assignments, and portraitures. His famous photographs of Kiki shot nude from the back and embelished with the "F"-holes of a violin, Le Violon d'Ingres, appeared in a 1924 issue of Litterature. Vogue also published some of his fashion photography in May of that Year. Indifferent to conventional distinctions between "fine" and applied art, yet devoted to the expression of intuitive states of being and chance effects, Man Ray sought commercial as well as artistic outlets for his extensive visual output that, besides Rayographs, included straight photographs, paintings, collages, assemblages, and construction.
During the 1920s and 1930s, Ray also worked on films with a number of artists, including Marcel Duchamp and his "Anemic Cinema," and published his work in both monographs and books of poetry. As a photographer he created a number of the iconic images of the century, including Tears, in 1932, and the portraits of Marcel Duchamp as his female alter-ego Rose Selavy of 1920-1921. Ray returned to New York in 1940, and stayed until 1951, when he returned to Paris. From 1951 on, Ray dedicated less of his time to photography and focused more on painting. His photographic work, however, brought him great acclaim. In 1961, Ray received the gold medal for photography at the Venice Biennale and in 1967, he received worldwide recognition in a show titled, Salute to Man Ray that was held at the Americana Center in Paris.
Man Ray died on November 18, 1976 in Paris, France.
