Man Ray

Les Champs Délicieux is Man Ray’s rarest and most important published volume devoted to his invention, the ‘Rayograph.’ Deceptively simple in both its presentation and content, this rare portfolio of cameraless images is the work of an artist drawing with light instead of paint. The story of the artist’s ‘discovery’ of the photogram, or Rayograph as he would later call it, is well-known. Carelessness in the darkroom resulted in some objects being mistakenly shuffled onto a sheet of light-sensitive photographic paper, which registered their reverse imprints and shadows when the paper was exposed to light. This led to his exploration of the cameraless, abstract image in a way that no other artist had done before. His “discovery” of this method of producing images was not, in fact, a discovery at all: the photogram was one of the earliest forms of photography and had been used quite regularly, and with beautiful results, by such photographers as William Henry Fox Talbot and Anna Atkins as early as the 1840s.

Man Ray succeeded in mastering his technique and learned to control light and shadows to perfection by taking these essentially flat and two-dimensional planes, and giving them movement, wit and style, creating works that Jean Cocteau termed ‘phantasmagorical.’ Rather than be satisfied with the outline of objects on paper, Man Ray learned to create an illusion of depth and time through the clever use of moving transparent and semi-transparent objects during exposure. The resulting three-dimensionality gave the works an air of mystery and surprise lacking in the traditional photogram. His Rayographs were acclaimed by the Dadaists, who loved the chance quality involved in the creation of these unique works as well as their seemingly meaningful content.

The title Les Champs Délicieux was inspired by the book of automatic writings by André Breton and Philippe Soupault, Les Champs Magnétiques, published in 1920. By the spring of 1922, Man Ray began working on the series of Rayographs that would become his Champs Délicieux. As each original photogram was a unique work, with no existing negative, Man Ray photographed the 12 Rayographs chosen for the album and these negatives were used in the production of the album plates.

According to a current major exhibition, only around fifteen examples of Les Champs Délicieux have been traced (Dada (exhibition catalogue), Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 2005-06, p. 646).