MAN RAY
Noire et blanche, 1926
© Man Ray Trust, Paris; VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2018 / Courtesy Kicken Berlin
Biography
Man Ray (American, 1890–1976, born Emmanuel Radnitzky) first used photography to catalogue his paintings in 1915 when still a New York-based painter and graphic designer. He met Marcel Duchamp, and together they published the magazine New York Dada. After relocating to Paris in 1921, Man Ray opened a studio for fashion and portrait photography with Berenice Abbott as his assistant. He joined the Surrealist movement and experimented with photographs made without a camera – his so-called “Rayograms” – as well as making films and assemblages. In 1940 he fled to New York via Lisbon, returning to Paris in 1951. One of the first Modernist photographers to be recognized as an artist, he received a gold medal for his photography at the Venice Biennale in 1961.
