Man Ray: When Objects Dream

The first in-depth study of Man Ray’s groundbreaking rayographs of the 1920s and their interconnections with his Dada and Surrealist works
 
Man Ray (1890–1976) worked in a range of media, but central to his practice was the rayograph, a type of photogram (or camera-less photograph) that he revolutionized and introduced into the Dada and Surrealist milieu of 1920s Paris. Oscillating between representation and abstraction, painting and photography, the rayograph was ambiguous in its making and subject matter, epitomizing avant-garde concerns of the day.
 
This richly illustrated book is the first to look at Man Ray’s work through the lens of his eponymous process, tracing a through line from the rayographs to his paintings, photographs, drawings, objects, and films, and highlighting the interconnections and shared motifs among them. Stephanie D’Alessandro and Stephen C. Pinson analyze Man Ray’s innovative methods while also exploring key themes across his art production, such as chance, indeterminacy, transformation, and the dualities of solid and transparent, shadow and light, form and space, and object and body.
 
Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press
 
Exhibition Schedule:
 
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
(September 14, 2025–February 1, 2026)

Stephanie D’Alessandro is Leonard A. Lauder Curator of Modern Art and senior research coordinator in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art, and Stephen C. Pinson is curator in the Department of Photography, both at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.