Man Ray

Man Ray was an American modernist artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal.  
Man Ray got into photography when he realised he didn't like the photos other people took for him, so he brought a camera and started to take them himself. He used black and white film and was also one of the first people using photography/ taking photographs which he wanted to call 'rayograms' but this didn't take off.
His first major work was neither painting or photos, And He was influenced by Picasso and cubism. He produced major works in a variety of media but considered himself a painter above all.
He was best known in the art world for his avant-garde photography, and he was a renowned fashion and portrait photographer.
Ray is also noted for his work with photograms, which he called "rayographs" in reference to himself.
He met Marcella Duchamp who challenged 'what is art?' since meeting him and playing chess, chess pieces began showing up in his self portraits, also becoming one of his keen interests.
when he first exhibited people weren't interested in his photographs but they were interested in his 'photograms' which was literally placing objects onto photographic paper and exposing it to light, he became a master of this!.
he controlled contrast and tones within the picture and his work has been shown in loads of magazines.
'YOU HAVE LIBERATED PAINTING' quote said by most people whilst looking at his paintings.
At first he worked in a hotel room using basic equipment, everyone used him as a photographer, including artists, friends, family. (his pictures had a rough edge)
he then upgraded to a hotel room with 3 rooms and got an assistant (ideally a women) to speed up the process.
Man Ray liked playing with shadows and set the camera up 3 meters away from the subject, and he never took more then 12 shots of a person (so he said) and cropped each image very carefully.
he added pencil marks to images to improve them and he understood what made a good photograph which was a contrast / play of light.
he liked symmetry within his images and his fashion images really show this. 
Man Ray was never short of money.
whilst everyone was photographing pretty things may ray was there really pushing the limits of photography, he dared to photo the things he wouldn't paint like 'NUDE'.