Man Ray

He married poet Adon Lacroix in 1914 and separated from her five years later. However, the couple officially divorced only in 1937.

He fell in love with Kiki de Montparnasse, who remained his companion through the 1920s and starred in his experimental films and became the subject of many of his shoots.

In 1929, he had an affair with photographer, Lee Miller but broke it off after a couple of years.

Emmanuel Radnitzky was born to Russian-Jewish immigrants in South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He had a brother and two sisters and shortly after the family relocated to Brooklyn, New York, they changed their surname to Ray in order to avoid discrimination.

His family was into the garment business and from a very young age, Ray was involved in the tailoring processes, which would eventually go on to inspire his love for art.

He studied at Brooklyn’s Boys’ High School from 1904 to 1909 and he would often visit museums to study the works of Old Masters. He was offered a scholarship to study architecture, but he refused it and chose to pursue a career as an artist instead.

Although his family was disillusioned by his choice of career, they reordered their house in order to provide a room for Man, which he would convert into his studio. In the course of the next four years, he painted and made a modest living as a commercial artist and technical illustrator.

He attended art classes, which were of little interest to him. When he joined the Ferrer School in 1912, his artistic imagination began to develop at a phenomenal rate.

During his stay in New York, he would frequently visit shows and galleries that showcased contemporary works. He showcased his first gallery of paintings and drawings in 1915 and the following year, a collection titled, ‘Self-Portrait’ was exhibited.

He developed a passion for photography and soon enough, displayed his first photographs, in 1918. He was engaged in the Dada movement, which required him to make objects and develop new methods of making photographic images.

In 1920, he showcased one of his earlier works of kinetic art while helping Duchamp with ‘Rotary Glass’. The same year, he founded the ‘Societe Anonyme’ along with Katherine Dreier and Duchamp.

In 1921, he moved to Paris where he fell in love with Kiki de Montparnasse. She became the subject of many of his famous photographic images and also agreed to be cast in his experimental films.

Through the next two decades, he became an extremely celebrated photographer and a number of personalities including Bridget Bate Tichenor, Gertrude Stein and James Joyce agreed to be photographed by him.

‘Solarization’ is a type of graphic print that can change the actual image clicked into a different tone/color, either partially or fully. This was rediscovered and reinvented by Man Ray and his partner, Lee Miller, when an exposed plate of film was accidentally developed under light. Although many 19th century photographers stumbled upon this technique, none went ahead with further developing the technique, which Ray is largely credited for.

While trying to cultivate photo prints in a dark room, he fortuitously discovered a modus operandi called ‘photogram’; a procedure of photography via light-sensitive paper. He nicknamed this style as ‘Rayogram’ or ‘Rayograph’ and built on this technique for more than four decades.