In 1921, the painter Man Ray sailed from New York to Paris. Once there, his friend Marcel Duchamp, whom he had met in 1915, in New Jersey, brought him into his circle of Dada artists. Settling in Montparnasse, Ray spent his days in cafés—drinking espressos and smoking with other avant-garde figures—and his nights in the darkroom. That winter, he pioneered the “rayograph,” a photographic technique that used light-sensitive paper instead of a camera to turned everyday objects—a teacup, a spoon—into something mysterious. As the poet Tristan Tzara put it, he seemed to capture the objects dreaming. With 60 rayographs alongside 100 paintings, drawings, films, photographs, and more, this Met exhibition (supported by the fashion house Schiaparelli) is the first to explore Ray’s ghostly innovation in the context of his other work from the 1910s and 1920s. —Elena Clavarino