Man Ray

Every piece in its frame, behind glass, is really two works. There’s the rayograph, its vaporous, everyday shapes drifting across the once light-sensitive paper. And over it, caught in the glass, a spontaneous portrait of the viewer, startled to confront himself.

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After the conversation, after she threw her things into bags, I stood awhile in what remained. A bed, two rugs, a place to sit. On the fridge, every photo of us together. Polaroids from Joshua Tree. Ocean Beach. Golden Gate Park.

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As ever, I write down my reactions to things. I attempt to tie Cubism to camera-less photography. Filling one side of the paper with scrawl, I flip it over and find, in semi-cursive, the note she wrote the night before leaving. It begins, This is what I know:

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In the previous gallery, I stood awhile in front of an early Braque, the everyday objects present in an otherwise splintered composition. I do that here, with the rayograph. Three fingers of the right hand / A key on a string / Cheese grater? When I run out of space to write, I bring out my phone.

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The picture—my photo of a photo framed in glass—is complicated by glare and reflection, the ideal beauty of the key obscured. I move right, attempt to block the light with my body, removing myself from the composition.