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

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

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Duchamp scandalized
the art world in 1917

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

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

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

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making art from whatever materials
were lying around his studio.

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

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

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a photographic answer
to Duchamp's readymades.

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

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He called these two
pictures Man and Woman.

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The two artists produced
many works in collaboration,

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

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

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In 1921, he too
set sail for Paris.

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

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and embraced his work
in ways New York had not.

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

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To support himself,
he took up portrait photography.

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

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Since I didn't,
I became a photographer.

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

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began to seek him out
to have their portraits taken.

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

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unexposed sheet
into the developer.

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

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

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

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but distorted and
refracted by the glass.

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

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some pencils, a brush,
a candle, a piece of twine,

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

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They looked startlingly
new and mysterious.

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He named his new
creation the radiograph.

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

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of paint and am
working directly with light itself.

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

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He orchestrated
complex compositions,

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often making multiple
exposures for a single picture,

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and coaxed mysterious
shadows out of ordinary objects.

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Over the next decade,
he made hundreds of photos

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in this manor and conducted
other experiments in the darkroom.

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

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committed heinous crimes
against chemistry and photography.

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

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

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achieving works of rare
beauty and strangeness.

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He applied his talents to
portraiture, fashion, and advertising.

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Along the way, he opened
new avenues for creative photography

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