“I do not photograph nature, I photograph my fantasy,” Man Ray proclaimed, and he found in the camera's eye and in light's magical chemistry the mechanisms for dreaming. Schooled as a painter and designer in New York, Man Ray turned to photography after discovering the 291 Gallery and its charismatic founder, Alfred Stieglitz. As a young expatriate in Paris during the twenties and thirties, Man Ray embraced Surrealism and Dadaism, creeds that emphasized chance effects, disjunction and surprise. Tireless experimentation with technique led him to employ solarization, grain enlargement, mixed media and cameraless prints (photograms)--which he called “Rayographs”. These successful manipulations for which he was dubbed “the poet of the darkroom” by Jean Cocteau, were a major contribution to twentieth-century photography. Man Ray presents 43 of the greatest images from the artist's career. The essay by Jed Perl describes the influences on Man Ray's career and his enduring contribution to photography. Born in 1890 in Philadelphia, Man Ray began as a painter, not taking up photography until 1915, around the same time he had his first one-man show of paintings in New York. A surrealist living in Paris during the twenties and thirties, he hoped to change or "transform" photography into a new kind of art. In 1922, an album of his first cameraless photos, the "Rayographs," were introduced, and a year later his first avant-garde film using the same technique was shown. During the forties he moved to Hollywood, where-- even though he still photographed-- painting once again became his main focus. After returning to Paris in 1952, he was awarded the Gold Medal for Photography at the Biennale, Venice in 1962. His work was also shown in leading museums in Paris, Los Angeles, Rotterdam, and Denmark. He died in France in 1976, and in 1988 was given a major retrospective exhibition with the National Museum of American Art (Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.). Used Book in Good Condition