Man Ray

Man Ray treated the darkroom as a place for accidents. His rayographs, made by laying objects directly on photographic paper, and his solarised portraits, with their glowing silver outlines, gave Surrealism its photographic look in 1920s Paris. Solarisation itself was developed with his assistant and partner Lee Miller, who discovered the effect when something brushed against her in the darkroom and later became a major photographer in her own right. His fashion and portrait work for Vogue and Harper's Bazaar carried the same tricks into the mainstream.