Champs Delicieux

In 1921, an up-and-coming artist named Man Ray convinced his patron, Ferdinand Howald, to pay his fare from New York to Paris and to support him there for a year. He quickly fell in with the Dadaists, and his art changed. He pioneered a new art form, a cameraless photograph he called the 'Rayograph'.

Champs délicieux documents that year in Paris by reproducing the correspondence between Man Ray and Howald and by publishing Howald's personal copy of Ray's album (also Champs délicieux) from that year - the first significant body of Ray's work. By placing these images in the context of the letters, Champs délicieux recreates an important turning point in Ray's career and a definitive moment in art history.

This collection, exhibited in the fall of 2000 by co-publisher University of Toronto Art Centre, was edited by Steven Manford, who is currently assembling, with Timothy Baum, a catalogue raisonné of the Rayographs.