For the first thirty years of the twentieth century, the streets surrounding the intersection of the boulevard du Montparnasse and the boulevard Raspail marked the center of avant-garde Europe. Man Ray's Montparnasse introduces the reader to this small section of Paris on the Left Bank during a time of artistic ferment and experimentation, of private affairs that became public ones, and of political and social change. Man Ray, the renowned photographer, was there to document it all. His world was filled with artists, writers, and poets, and his camera was his key, allowing him access to cafes, salons, artists' studios, and writers' homes. Within a year of his arrival, he was invited to be Gertrude Stein's official portraitist and to record the image of Marcel Proust on his deathbed. He photographed Pablo Picasso and Peggy Guggenheim, made films alongside the Dadaists, and played chess with Marcel Duchamp. Illustrated with Man Ray's own photographs, this book chronicles a legendary time and place. Author Herbert Lottman leads the reader through the winding streets of Montparnasse, past the usual tourist attractions and into a vanished world. Quick-paced and intensely readable, his text traces the threads connecting the diverse artistic movements and complicated, often turbulent, personal relationships that bound these groups together and, at times, tore them apart. By interweaving the lives and works of the artists with Man Ray's stunning photographs, Lottman has created a vivid history of life at the center of one of the twentieth century's seminal artistic moments.