Man Ray (1890–1976; actually Emmanuel Rudnitzky or Emmanuel Radnitzky) was an American photographer, film director, painter, and object artist. Man Ray was an important artist of Dadaism and Surrealism, but has been categorized as part of modernism based on the multifaceted character of his work in general, and is regarded as a person who provided important impulses for the modern history of photography and film. His numerous portrait photographs of contemporary artists document the peak phase of cultural life in the Paris of the 1920s.