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The Missouri Review

Art | July 19, 2023

Man Ray: Reluctand Celebrity Photographer

Man Ray: Reluctant Celebrity Photographer 

Kristine Somerville 

  

“If it is practiced by a man of taste, photography will have the appearance of art.”  

—Henri Matisse  

 

In 1920, on Alfred Stieglitz’s advice that all artists must travel, especially to Europe, Man Ray moved to Paris. To bring in needed cash, he set up a small studio in his room at the Grand Hotel in the heart of Montparnasse and was soon as “busy as a cockroach” working as a portrait photographer. When he attended James Joyce’s reading from Ulysses at Adrienne Monnier’s bookstore across the street from Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare and Company on rue de l’Odéon, Beach arranged for Man Ray to photograph the Irish author for publicity stills in exchange for promoting his art in the windows and on the walls of her bookshop and lending library.  

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