Man Ray’s first fashion shoot was a disaster. It was 1922, and the artist had just arrived in Paris from New York with one suitcase, $100 and the singular goal of becoming one of the bright young things of dadaism alongside Duchamp and André Breton.
He had been taking photographs for a few years, but mainly portraits (Jean Cocteau was an early Paris sitter) and not always enthusiastically. He later said “photography is not art”, and that he would only shoot things he couldn’t paint. Still, he had no money so when he was commissioned by Paul Poiret, the French
