In Focus: Man Ray

Katherine Ware  

During a career that spanned more than fifty years, two continents, and work in many media, Man Ray (1890–1976) produced a large body of photographic images that continue to command our attention. This volume presents his early work in New York in the 1910s, selections from his sizable Paris oeuvre in the 20s, 30s, and 50s, and photographs taken during his time in Hollywood in the 40s. Though in later years he expressed a desire to be remembered as a painter, Man Ray continued to work with photography throughout his life, pushing the boundaries of the medium with cameraless images, solarized portraits, and other innovations.

The J. Paul Getty Museum's collection of three hundred works by Man Ray includes vintage prints from the 1910s through the 1960s. Presented in this volume are more than fifty photographs, with commentary on each image by Katherine Ware, former assistant curator of photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum.

In Focus: Man Ray also contains a chronological overview of his life and an edited transcript of a colloquium on his career, with participants Ware; Jo Ann Callis, artist and teacher at the California Institute of the Arts; David Featherstone, independent editor and curator; Merry Foresta, senior curator at the National Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C.; Weston Naef, curator emeritus of photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum; Francis Naumann, independent scholar and curator; and Dickran Tashjian, professor of art history at the University of California, Irvine.