Man Ray was one of the most versatile of the surrealist photographers, producing experimental montages, portraits and documentary photographs of 'historic' moments. In this image, the fourteen-year-old schoolgirl Gisèle Prassinos reads her poems to members of the surrealist group, including André Breton and Paul Eluard (both seated). Her older brother had discovered her poems and stories which, according to Prassinos, had been written 'automatically' (that is without conscious control) and without any knowledge of contemporary poetry or Surrealism. This photograph was used as the frontispiece to Prassinos's book of poems, 'La Sauterelle arthritique' (The Arthritic Grasshopper), published in 1935.