Man Ray

Emmanuel Radnitzky was born in Brooklyn in August 1890 and crossed the Atlantic to settle in Paris, where he spent most of his working life and eventually took French citizenship. He orbited the Dada and Surrealist circles without formal membership, keeping one foot out even as he shaped both movements. He worked across media—painting, sculpture, film—but always insisted painting was his true calling, even as his fashion shoots and portraits paid the bills and his rayographs, cameraless images made by placing objects on light-sensitive paper, secured his place in the canon. He died in Paris in…