A collaboration between two voraciously innovative artists and friends, this photograph was made on a visit by Man Ray to Marcel Duchamp’s studio. Duchamp had been in Paris for a number of months, leaving the sheet of glass that was his opus, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (1915–23), lying on sawhorses to accumulate dust. After the photograph was made, Duchamp cleaned the surface of the artwork, leaving a section covered with dust that he permanently affixed to the glass. The exposure lasted over an hour in the dim light of the studio, slowly rendering the texture of the various and uncertain materials in exquisite detail. Man Ray cropped the negative on a portion of the glass appearing “like some strange landscape from a bird’s-eye view,” emphasizing spatial uncertainty.