Rayograph
Readers of the cultural review Les feuilles libres (Loose Pages) in spring 1922 encountered an astonishing image: a coiled wire seemingly emerging from the side of a ghostly drinking glass and emitting a cloudlike puff of smoke. Identified only as a photograph by Man Ray, it was printed within an effusive “open letter” from the French poet Jean Cocteau to Man Ray. The first publication of a rayograph was followed by many others. Four appeared in the November 1922 issue of Vanity Fair. The American magazine helped to establish artist’s term for his process, explaining: “These ‘rayographs,’ as he calls them, are made without the aid of a camera lens."
Artwork Details
- Title: Rayograph
- Artist: Man Ray (American, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1890–1976 Paris)
- Date: 1922
- Medium: Gelatin silver print
- Dimensions: 9 1/4 × 7 in. (23.5 × 17.8 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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