Man
Ray

A photographer, painter and film director born into a family of Russian emigrants, Man Ray, whose real name was Emmanuel Radnitsky, revolutionised the art of photography, expanding its hitherto classical boundaries by encouraging experimentation and the search for new processes.

Couplings of positives and negatives, manipulations of optical surfaces, solarisations and rayograms were born of his desire to surpass the limits of his favourite medium. He considered photography to be at the dawn of its history, "still in its infancy". Initially an American Dadaist in New York with Marcel Duchamp, in the early 1920s he moved to Paris, joining the Dadaists and Surrealists there, including Louis Aragon, André Breton and Paul Éluard. Defining himself as a "fautographe", Man Ray diverted photography from its original definitions. He was amongst the first to no longer use it simply to represent reality, but as a real creative tool at the service of his imagination.

Man Ray’s Pinault Collection photographs will be exhibited for the first time during the “Au-delà de la couleur” (“Beyond Colour”) show at the Couvent des Jacobins in Rennes in June 2021.