Born Emmanuel Radnitzky in Philadelphia, Man Ray spent much of his career in Paris, working in a variety of media, notably photography, film, painting, and collage. Ray was an innovative fashion and portrait photographer interested in experimental photography, including what he called “rayographs,” photograms produced by placing objects on top of photosensitized paper and exposing the paper to light. A prominent figure in the Dada and Surrealist movements, Ray was inspired by friend Marcel Duchamp to incorporate found objects into his practice. Ray’s influence persists, as seen in work such as Sherrie Levine’s La Fortune (After Man Ray), 1990, a sculptural realization of a billiards table inspired by one painted by Ray in his 1938 oil painting La Fortune.

–Samantha Owens, from the Glenstone Field Guide