The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York will present "Man Ray: When Objects Dream," an exhibition exploring the artist's pioneering rayographs—camera-less photographs created by placing objects on light-sensitive paper. Featuring approximately 60 rayographs and 100 additional works from the Met's collection and over 50 international lenders, the show is the first to situate this technique within Man Ray's broader practice of the 1910s and 1920s, including paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, films, and photographs.
The exhibition matters because it reframes Man Ray's rayographs not as isolated experiments but as central to his boundary-breaking oeuvre, bridging Dada and Surrealism. Supported by major foundations and collectors, the show underscores the enduring influence of Man Ray's innovative methods on photography and modern art, while the accompanying catalogue—funded by the Mellon Foundation—provides the first in-depth study of this body of work.