The first time I know about Man Ray was in my art history class. We watched an experiential film of his (Retour à la Raison) as a great example for Dadaism. After research, I find that Man Ray is versed in painting, photography, installation art, poetry, and philosophy. As a beginner of photogram, I found that May Ray might be called as the inventor.

Man Ray had developed unique techniques for photography. As early as 1921, he began experimenting with imaging methods that did not use a camera. Man Ray proudly named this ingenious imaging technique “Rayograph”, which is now widely used as a “photogram”. This invention also made Man Ray’s work successful got into Vanity Fair.

A darkroom mistake in 1929 brought another breakthrough in the history of modern photography: due to Man Ray carelessly turned on the fluorescent light, causing a photo paper with his assistant Lee Miller’s portrait to be seriously overexposed, but the white shadow part of the anti-white, unexpectedly deepened the edge lines, giving birth to Solarization. This technique, which was later widely used to highlight outlines.

What’s interesting about his work is that he often uses nudity to express other things, but uses things that have nothing to do with bare desires to suggest sexual organs, which is a new angle to think about nudity in photography.