Man Ray. Trees + Flowers - Insects Animals

Man Ray was born Emmanuel Radnitzky in Philadelphia, 1890. He spent most of his working life in Paris, where he was a significant contributor to both Dadaism and Surrealism (though his ties to both movements were informal). He died in 1976. Man Ray: Trees & Flowers--Insects & Animals is an archival project that draws extensively on this collection. The title of the series was found scrawled across the back of a photograph, and it conveys the indexical nature of this most unusual archive. For Man Ray, the photographs functioned as a research index to the themes and motifs that he employed in better-known works, with subjects including castles and ruined buildings, street scenes, various found objects and records of his travels and observations in Europe and the United States.