Man Ray2025920262Metropolitan Museum of Art

The first in-depth study of Man Rays groundbreaking rayographs of the 1920s and their interconnections with his Dada and Surrealist works

Man Ray (18901976) worked in a range of media, but central to his practice was the rayograph, a type of photogram (or camera-less photograph) that he revolutionized and introduced into the Dada and Surrealist milieu of 1920s Paris. Oscillating between representation and abstraction, painting and photography, the rayograph was ambiguous in its making and subject matter, epitomizing avant-garde concerns of the day.

This richly illustrated book is the first to look at Man Rays work through the lens of his eponymous process, tracing a through line from the rayographs to his paintings, photographs, drawings, objects, and films, and highlighting the interconnections and shared motifs among them. Stephanie DAlessandro and Stephen C. Pinson analyze Man Rays innovative methods while also exploring key themes across his art production, such as chance, indeterminacy, transformation, and the dualities of solid and transparent, shadow and light, form and space, and object and body.

‘Man Ray: When Objects Dream by Stephanie D’Alessandro and Stephen C. Pinson‘ by Yale Press on YouTube