Rayograph
Sometime in late 1924 or early 1925, Man Ray embarked on a series of fantastical rayographs that mark a departure from his skewed views of familiar objects. Each image features a celestial body, but it shifts from sun to moon across various pictures of ethereal realms and appears as an eyelike, astral orb in an astonishing sequence of otherworldly vistas. Rather than invite curiosity through the transformation of everyday things, these rayographs (including this one) provoke instead a state of wonder through what poet Robert Desnos called a “great imaginary maelstrom . . . a bouquet of vertigo.”
Artwork Details
- Title: Rayograph
- Artist: Man Ray (American, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1890–1976 Paris)
- Date: 1925
- Medium: Gelatin silver print
- Dimensions: 9 1/4 × 11 5/8 in. (23.5 × 29.5 cm)
- Classification: Photographs
- Credit Line: Bluff Collection, Promised Gift of John A. Pritzker
- Rights and Reproduction: © Man Ray 2015 Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / ADAGP, Paris 2025
- Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art
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