11 gelatin silver prints (copy prints) after rayographs on Leonar and Agfa paper, printed 1963. From 26.6 x 21.4 cm to 29 x 21.5 cm. Some prints dated and numbered in pencil, each print with photographer's stamp 'PHOTOGRAPH BY MAN RAY' and stamp 'REPRODUCTION' on the verso. - Three prints slightly stained. Each print matted.
Original maquette, titled "50 Rayographs", c. 1965: Spiral bound sketchbook. 35.5 x 28 cm. Board cover with ink and watercolour design by the artist. The first pages with sketches in pencil, ballpoint pen and ink and with residues of former mounting.
Handwritten notice by Man Ray in ballpoint pen, signed and dated October 27, 1965, relating to the book project.
Further images on request.
This draft book, entitled “50 Rayographs” was entrusted by Man Ray to the New York art dealer Roberta Kimmel Cohn in 1965 with the request to find a publisher in the United States. However, the project was not realised in the end. (See Herbert Molderings: Rayographien – Unikate, Editionen und Reproduktionen, in: Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur (ed.), Man Ray - L. Fritz Gruber. Jahre einer Freundschaft 1956 - 1976, Göttingen 2008, p. 95). Man Ray’s outlines on the first few pages of the draft show that he had planned his own preface and that he had also wanted to use texts written by his friend Tristan Tzara, who had died a few years earlier. Tzara had written these texts much earlier, in 1922, for a portfolio called “Champs délicieux” and, in 1934, for the book “Man Ray’s Photographs, Paris 1920-1934” about the artist’s camera-less photography. For illustration purposes, Man Bray mounted three rayographs into the spiral-bound book and added 14 more separately. Except for one, the 11 photographs shown here match the motifs which he had selected for the portfolio “Man Ray 12 Rayographs 1921-1928”. In both cases they had mainly been printed onto matte Leonard paper, possibly by Johannes Schubert who was responsible for the printing of the portfolio.
Provenance
Roberta Kimmel Cohn