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Lot Essay
In the winter of 1921-1922, Man Ray stumbled on the creative potential of the photogram. He experimented enthusiastically with the technique, dubbing his creations 'Rayographs'. Aware that he was on to something exciting, Man Ray wrote to a patron, 'In my new work I feel I have reached the climax of things I have been searching the last ten years -- I have never worked as I did this winter, I have freed myself from the sticky medium of paint, and am working directly with light itself. I have found a way of recording it. The subjects were never so near to life itself as in my new work, and never so completely translated to the medium.'
In what may well be the first publication of a Rayograph, the present lot was reproduced in the Spring of 1922 in the revue Les Feuilles Libres accompanied by a text by Jean Cocteau, an 'open letter' to Man Ray in which he wrote, 'Your pictures are the objects themselves, not photographed by a lens, but directly inserted by your poet's hand between the light and the sensitive paper.'
In later years when Man Ray began to make copies of his Rayographs, his practice was to mark the original as he did here on the reverse of the mount, 'Original 23'. The number indicates the year he mistakenly believed he had created it.
In what may well be the first publication of a Rayograph, the present lot was reproduced in the Spring of 1922 in the revue Les Feuilles Libres accompanied by a text by Jean Cocteau, an 'open letter' to Man Ray in which he wrote, 'Your pictures are the objects themselves, not photographed by a lens, but directly inserted by your poet's hand between the light and the sensitive paper.'
In later years when Man Ray began to make copies of his Rayographs, his practice was to mark the original as he did here on the reverse of the mount, 'Original 23'. The number indicates the year he mistakenly believed he had created it.