Facile.

Facile is a beautiful synthesis of image and text, combining Paul Éluard's love poems written for his wife Nusch (born Maria Benz) with Man Ray's nude photographs of her. The book shows the range of techniques Man Ray experimented with, including solarisation, double exposures, and superimposed and negative photographs.

'Although Man Ray participated in and produced hundreds of fruitful collaborative works in his life, Facile must be ranked among the most successful... It is a fluent but not at allfacile collaboration between the poet, the photographer, the model and muse, and the publisher Guy Levis Manos' (David Levi Strauss in The Book of 101 Books: Seminal Photographic Books of the Twentieth Century).

First edition, inscribed by Man Ray in blue ink on title-page, number 69 of 1000 copies on vélin, there were also 200 hors-commerce copies and 25 on Japon; folded sheets (242 x 179 mm, 9½ x 7 in); black & white photographs printed in gravure by Breger, pages lightly toned as usual, erased inscription on half-title; photo-illustrated card covers, minor wear to extremities, an exceptionally fresh copy in the original glassine; [28]pp.

The Book of 101 Books Seminal Photographic Books of the Twentieth Century pp86-7; The Photobook A History, I pp104-5; The Open Book pp118-9; 802 photo books from the Auer collection p217; Paris, Les livres de photographies 1920-1950 pp152-3.