Man Ray
Dada and Surrealist photographer who made pictures without a camera and called them rayographs.
Man Ray was born Emmanuel Radnitzky in Philadelphia in 1890, worked with Duchamp in New York Dada, and moved to Paris in 1921, where he supported himself as a fashion and portrait photographer for Vogue and Harper's Bazaar while making the work he cared about. He produced rayographs — camera-less images made by placing objects on photographic paper — pioneered solarisation with Lee Miller, and made objects that have entered the general vocabulary: the flat iron with tacks, the metronome with an eye. He returned to America during the war, went back to Paris, and died there in 1976.
Photography is the market, and vintage is the word that governs it: a print made close to the negative's date, by the artist, is worth many times a later print of the same image, and Man Ray printed and reprinted extensively over fifty years. Stamps, inscriptions, paper and toning are what establish this, and expert assessment is normal. Rayographs are unique. His objects exist both as originals and as authorised later editions, and the difference is fundamental. The Man Ray Trust controls the estate and reproduction rights.
If you own a work by Man Ray
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
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Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.