Man Ray: La Photographie N'Est Pas L'Art

Photography is not art, proclaims Man Ray in the essay re-published here as an impeccable facsimile edition of the 1937 original. A pamphlet of loose sheets and 12 images, this publication re-visits an issue that was hotly controversial during the first half of the 20th century – Is Photography Art? – as examined in the influential Paris magazine L’Art. Despite the fact that Man Ray’s provocative works were among the photographs generally agreed by critics to be, in fact, art, Man Ray himself seems barely interested in considering the question. “There’s no point trying to find out if it’s an art,” he said. “Art is a thing of the past. We need something else. You’ve got to watch light at work. It’s light that creates. I sit down in front of my sheet of photographic paper and I think.”