Rayograph, 1923

After having moved to Paris with Marcel Duchamp's encouragement in 1921, Man Ray settled in the artistically vibrant quarter of Montparnasse. It was here that he discovered for himself the camera-less photogram technique, which he famously called ‘Rayographs’. This technique of picture making was for him like the activities around ready-made artworks and automatic writing that his peers were engaged in. The immediacy of the method seduced the avant-garde of Paris and contributed to his establishment in the circle of the Dada group there. By the end of the year he had not only established this work publicly and in print but in December he published his first portfolio, Les Champs Delicieux, with an introduction from Tristan Tzara. With the solarization studies of the next decade, his Rayographs of the 1920s would be his greatest innovations in photography. He continued to create Rayographs until the end of his life.

The photogram technique, which involves placing objects on, above or near unexposed photographic paper in a darkroom and selectively making light exposures with no negative involved, allowed Man Ray to compose images on a blank canvas, so-to-speak, as a painter would. The work produced, however, is fully imbued with the machine-art of photography. The technique allowed for a natural layering of silhouettes and cast shadow. At once ghost-like and real, the Rayographs lent themselves to experimentation. By choosing objects close at hand or with some personal significance the Rayographs often take on an autobiographic tone and inevitably relate to each other. Those images created in the first two years of his efforts, 1922-23 seem to be the most effortless, ethereal and dreamlike in their effect.

The work offered here is from a small group of similar works from 1923, pairing feminine swatches of lace with a masculine, phallic candle. Man Ray's anthropomorphic tendencies are well-established in his work of the 1920s and 30s, and the Rayograph offered here is no exception. The lips-like form and the implied movement in the shifting shadows are part of a mysterious analytical code, symbols with carnal implication.

The print is signed and dated by the artist on the recto and stamped ‘ORIGINAL’ on the verso; Man Ray used this particular stamp to distinguish his original, unique Rayograph works from subsequent ‘copy prints.’ The artist’s last studio address, on the rue Ferou, is also written in pencil on the verso. It is likely therefore that this Rayograph was held onto by him through World War II and did not leave his possession until the 1950s or later when he returned to Paris.