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It may have been while preparing this photograph that he came up with the idea for a somewhat related image of debris wherein the contents of an overturned ashtray serve as the entire visual field.  But unlike the photograph he prepared for Duchamp, Man Ray wanted his image to convey a disparaging view of his immediate environment – and, perhaps, of the deteriorating artistic climate of the times – for he gave it the descriptive title New York 1920.

In fact, in 1920, New York had very little offer for Man Ray.  His person life had suffered as a result of a separation from Adon Lacroix, and his artistic career had not fared any better.  His last show at the Daniel Gallery had not been well received.  Faced with continuous and sustained resistance to his ideas, as well as with a lack of interest in his work (nothing sold from the exhibition), Man Ray began seriously to contemplate the possibility of relocating to a more supportive environment.

The extent to which Man Ray had hoped his ideas would take precedence over the objects he created to represent them (a conceptual position that anticipated developments in modern art by some fifty years) is evident in his response to a request from a newspaper reporter to explain the concept of tactilism, a term that that had been promoted in this period to accentuate the physical three-dimensional values of a work of art.  “I want to eliminate the material,” he explained, “show the idea.”  For Man Ray, it was no longer enough for artists simply to provide their audience with a simulation of objects found in their everyday environment.  “We don’t want a record of the actual object,” he said.  “We want a result of it.”

It was in this very period – during the early months of 1921 – that the call from Europe grew ever louder, as Man Ray entered into correspondence with the Dadaists, vanguard European poets and painters whose artistic aspirations and views of creative freedom so closely paralleled his own.  In April 1921, with Duchamp’s assistance, Man Ray edited and published the only issue of an American periodical devoted exclusively to the subject of Dada in New York.  But few of his colleagues were interested in such a far-flung European enterprise, so his efforts to gain adherents in New York completely failed.  When Duchamp announced his plans to return to Paris, Man Ray promised to follow.  With funds advanced from an out-of-town collector against the future purchase of paintings, he bought a ticket aboard the SS Savoie and set sail for Paris on July 14, 1921.  Man Ray’s years in New York were over.  Other than for a few brief trips back to visit relatives, Man Ray remained in Paris for the next nineteen years.