Now back in the spotlight, though in truth he never faded, the great American photographer/artist Man Ray (1890-1976) is on view until January 11 at Palazzo Reale, Milan, with a photographic exhibition that highlights his entire dadaist, surrealist, and forward-looking multitasking poetics across photography, art, design, fashion, cinema, and experimentation. For me it brought back the unforgettable memory I had kept in my heart.

Today the exhibition on Man Ray opens at Palazzo Reale. There are encounters that change your life, moments that become eternal, Masters who in just a few hours make you understand an entire world. This is what happened to me with Man Ray, whom I met in Paris in his atelier for a feature in L’Uomo Vogue. I was very young and intimidated by the idea of meeting a Myth.

Flavio, Oliviero (Toscani) and I, a novice editor facing what I thought would be a thorny interview full of difficulties. His atelier was a verrière, a small glass pavilion at the back of a courtyard. The transparent roof barely filtered the raindrops, helped by the tarpaulin beneath, around which a pigeon flitted, relieving itself freely. Then they appeared, Man and his wife, the dancer Juliet Browner, the last of his loves. Two small, slender, light figures, they seemed about to fly away. Juliet still beautiful. After the photos they offered us tea. In the chaos of the studio she arrived with Limoges cups, flowery, elegant, anachronistic in all that disorder. Then Man invited me to sit next to him, on a broken chair. And the interview, for which I felt unprepared, turned into a lesson in art and life. The famous “pain bleu”, the iron with nails, the eye-sculpture, the solarized photographs, other works started and left unfinished, tools, materials, books, clothes floating in careless and fascinating disorder. There was no need to ask questions. He did almost all the talking, and suddenly the culture of contemporary and experimental art became completely clear to me, even beyond Man Ray. Oliviero surreptitiously snapped a candid photo of this precious encounter, which has always remained with me, and today’s exhibition brought it powerfully back to the surface.

Man Ray Forme di Luce
Curated by Pierre-Yves Butzbach and Robert Rocca
Palazzo Reale - Piazza Duomo - Milan
September 24 - January 11, 2026