00:00En 1915, en New York, a young painter named Man Ray was introduced to the artist Marcel Duchamp.
00:07But Man Ray spoke no French, and Duchamp knew little English, so they played a game of tennis.
00:14Duchamp scandalized the art world in 1917,
00:18when he anonymously submitted an ordinary plumbing fixture to an art exhibition.
00:23This was one of several everyday objects Duchamp presented as art and called ready-mades.
00:30The two of them shared ideas, and Man Ray began experimenting,
00:34making art from whatever materials were lying around his studio.
00:38He had initially taken up the camera to photograph his own work,
00:42but now he began making evocative pictures of ordinary objects,
00:46in a sense, a photographic answer to Duchamp's ready-mades.
00:51In 1920, he photographed a kitchen mixer and an assemblage of objects from his darkroom.
00:56He called these two pictures, man and woman.
01:01The two artists produce many works in collaboration,
01:04and Man Ray helped Duchamp create his alter ego, Eros C'est La Vie.
01:08But Duchamp returned to France, and Man Ray found himself out of sorts.
01:16In 1921, he too set sail for Paris.
01:20There he was taken in by a group of poets, artists, and anarchists,
01:23who admired and embraced his work in ways New York had not.
01:27Still, in the midst of this thriving culture of creative thinkers,
01:31he struggled to make a living.
01:32To support himself, he took up portrait photography.
01:37If I'd had the nerve, I'd have become a thief or a gangster.
01:40Since I didn't, I became a photographer.
01:43The writers, the intellectuals, and artists living in Paris at that time
01:47began to seek him out to have their portraits taken.
01:50Once, when working in the darkroom,
01:52he made an accidental discovery when he dropped an unexposed sheet into the developer.
01:56Regretting the waste of paper,
02:00I mechanically placed a small glass funnel,
02:02the graduate and the thermometer, on the wetted paper.
02:06I turned on the light.
02:09Before my eyes, an image began to fall.
02:12Not quite a simple silhouette,
02:14but distorted and refracted by the glass.
02:19Taking whatever objects came to hand,
02:21my hotel room key, a handkerchief,
02:23some pencils, a brush, a candle, a piece of twine.
02:27I made a few more prints,
02:29excitedly, enjoying myself immensely.
02:33They looked startlingly new and mysterious.
02:38He named his new creation,
02:40the Rayograph.
02:41He wrote triumphantly to a patron,
02:43I have finally freed myself from the sticky medium of paint,
02:46and am working directly with light itself.
02:50For all their simplicity,
02:51the Rayographs powerfully evoke space and movement.
02:55He orchestrated complex compositions,
02:58often making multiple exposures for a single picture,
03:01and coaxed mysterious shadows out of ordinary objects.
03:05Over the next decade,
03:06he made hundreds of photos in this manner,
03:08and conducted other experiments in the darkroom.
03:11I deliberately dodged all the rules,
03:13mixed the most insane products together,
03:15committed heinous crimes against chemistry and photography.
03:21Man Ray once said he set out to violate every rule in photography.
03:25Throughout the 20s and 30s,
03:27he continually pushed the frontiers of the photographic medium,
03:30achieving works of rare beauty and strangeness.
03:33He applied his talent to portraiture, fashion, and advertising.
03:38Along the way,
03:39he opened new avenues for creative photography,
03:42and produced some of the most memorable and iconic pictures of his time.
03:46He was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who
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