Man Ray created the photographic technique known as rayographs.
A rayograph is a photogram: an image made without a camera by placing objects directly on light-sensitive photographic paper and exposing it to light. The objects block or modulate the light, producing silhouettes, translucent tones and unexpected shapes.
Man Ray developed and popularized the name “rayograph,” combining the word photograph with his own artistic name. His experiments in the 1920s made the process closely associated with Dada and Surrealism. The results often look mysterious because ordinary objects become stark outlines, shadows or abstract compositions.
The technique itself was not invented from nothing. Earlier photographers, including William Henry Fox Talbot, had made camera-less images, and artists such as Christian Schad and László Moholy-Nagy also explored photograms. The key distinction is that Man Ray called his versions rayographs and made them a signature of his Surrealist practice. Rayographs are therefore not conventional photographs taken through a lens, and they should not be confused with radiographs, such as medical X-ray images.