Man Ray

Man Ray

 orig. Emmanuel Radnitzky

(born Aug. 25, 1890, Philadelphia, Pa., U.S.—died Nov. 18, 1976, Paris, France) U.S. photographer, painter, and filmmaker. He grew up in New York City, where he studied architecture, engineering, and art. With Marcel Duchamp he formed the New York Dada group in 1917 and produced ready-mades. In 1921 he moved to Paris and became associated with the Surrealists. He rediscovered the technique for making “cameraless” pictures (photograms), which he called “rayographs,” by placing objects on light-sensitive paper; he also experimented with the technique of solarization, which renders part of the image negative and part positive by exposing a print or negative to a flash of light during development. He turned to portrait and fashion photography and made a virtually complete record of the celebrities of Parisian cultural life of the 1920s and '30s. He also made important contributions as an avant-garde filmmaker in the 1920s.

---

Man Ray (b. Emmanuel Rudnitsky) (1890–1976) painter, photographer; born in Philadelphia. A self-taught artist, he took odd jobs in advertising before leaving for Paris, where he was a commercial photographer (1921–39). Inspired by Dadaism, he used the Rayogram, a photo developed by sunlight, to combine painting and photography, defying the conventions of both. He taught photography in Hollywood (1939–50) before returning to Paris for good.