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In 1915 in New York, a young painter[br]named Man Ray was introduced to the artist Marcel Duchamp.

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But Man Ray spoke no French, and Duchamp[br]knew little English, so they played a game of tennis.

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Duchamp scandalized[br]the art world in 1917

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when he anonymously submitted an[br]ordinary plumbing fixture to an art exhibition.

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This was one of several everyday[br]objects Duchamp presented as art and called readymades.

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The two of them shared ideas,[br]and Man Ray began experimenting,

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making art from whatever materials[br]were lying around his studio.

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He had initially taken up the[br]camera to photograph his own work,

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but now he began making evocative[br]pictures of ordinary objects, in a sense,

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a photographic answer[br]to Duchamp's readymades.

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In 1920, he photographed a kitchen mixer[br]and an assemblage of objects from his darkroom.

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He called these two[br]pictures Man and Woman.

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The two artists produced[br]many works in collaboration,

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and Man Ray helped Duchamp[br]create his alter ego, Eros St. Lave.

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But Duchamp returned to France,[br]and Man Ray found himself out of sorts.

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In 1921, he too[br]set sail for Paris.

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There he was taken in by a group[br]of poets, artists, and anarchists who admired

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and embraced his work[br]in ways New York had not.

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Still, in the midst of this thriving culture[br]of creative thinkers, he struggled to make a living.

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To support himself,[br]he took up portrait photography.

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If I'd had the nerve, I'd have[br]become a thief or a gangster.

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Since I didn't,[br]I became a photographer.

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The writers, the intellectuals,[br]and artists living in Paris at that time

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began to seek him out[br]to have their portraits taken.

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Once, when working in the darkroom,[br]he made an accidental discovery when he dropped an

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unexposed sheet[br]into the developer.

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Regretting the waste of paper,[br]I mechanically placed a small glass funnel

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to graduate in the thermometer[br]on the wetted paper. I turned on the light.

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Before my eyes an image began to form,[br]not quite a simple silhouette,

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but distorted and[br]refracted by the glass.

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Taking whatever objects came to hand,[br]my hotel room key, a handkerchief,

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some pencils, a brush,[br]a candle, a piece of twine,

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I made a few more prints,[br]excitedly enjoying myself immensely.

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They looked startlingly[br]new and mysterious.

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He named his new[br]creation the radiograph.

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He wrote triumphantly to a patron,[br]I have finally freed myself from the sticky medium

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of paint and am[br]working directly with light itself.

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For all their simplicity, the[br]radiographs powerfully evoked space and movement.

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He orchestrated[br]complex compositions,

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often making multiple[br]exposures for a single picture,

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and coaxed mysterious[br]shadows out of ordinary objects.

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Over the next decade,[br]he made hundreds of photos

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in this manor and conducted[br]other experiments in the darkroom.

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I deliberately dodged all the rules,[br]mixed the most insane products together,

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committed heinous crimes[br]against chemistry and photography.

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Man Ray once said he[br]set out to violate every rule in photography.

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Throughout the twenties and thirties[br]he continually pushed the frontiers of the photographic medium,

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achieving works of rare[br]beauty and strangeness.

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He applied his talents to[br]portraiture, fashion, and advertising.

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Along the way, he opened[br]new avenues for creative photography

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and produced some of the most[br]memorable and iconic pictures of his time.