The Photogram

A photogram is a photographic image made without a camera by placing objects directly onto the surface of a light-sensitive material such as photographic paper and then exposing it to light. This photographic technique is an alternative way of creating camera-less photographs. The usual result is a negative shadow image that shows variations in tone that depends upon the transparency of the objects used. Areas of the paper that have received no light appear white; those exposed through transparent or semi-transparent objects appear grey.

The application of the concept of the photogram has its roots in the primordial moments of the history of chemical-based photography. During the early 19th century, as iron and silver based photographic processes were being tried, images were made by placing botanical specimens and delicate objects such as lace onto the chemically coated paper and exposing using sunlight. This was done as an alternative to drawing.

The first photographer producing photograms was William Henry Fox Talbot refering to them as photogenic drawings or shadowgrams, which he made by placing leaves and pieces of material onto sensitized paper, then left them outdoors on a sunny day to expose. This produced a dark background with a white silhouette of the object used.

Although, there is clearly artistic beauty in the arrangements of these objects in even the earliest photograms, it was not until the early 20th century that artists and photographers began to express new ideas via the photogram.

William Henry Fox Talbot, ‘Flowers, Leaves, and Stem’, 1838

Photogram as shown before by Talbot should be considered as traces, or documents of existing shapes or forms. There are, of course, exceptions, but after WWI, the experiments of Christian Schad, followed by Man Ray and László Moholy-Nagy essentially changed the photogram from a process for documentation to one of creative expression.

In 1918 Christian Schad, who was inspired by Cubism, began experimenting in Europe by making cameraless photographic images. By 1919 Schad was creating photogenic drawings from random arrangements of discarded objects he had collected such as torn tickets, receipts and rags.

Christian Schad, ‘Schadograph’, 1918

Schad's new imagery was constructed by taking discarded unimportant objects and arranging them. The photograms created from these arrangements had taken on a new form and meaning not considered previously. His photograms are referred to as ‘Schadographs’.

Christian Schad, ‘Schadograph’, 1918

He preferred worn materials, such as scraps of paper and bits of fabric, often searching for these things on the streets and in garbage cans. Schad frequently extended his assault on artistic tradition by cutting a jagged border around the Schadographs, "to free them," as he explained, "from the convention of the square."

It was arguably the Surrealist Man Ray who made the technique popular. He stumbled across the process by accident when he placed a small glass funnel, graduate and thermometer over an unexposed sheet of paper that had accidentally been previously submerged in developer. When he turned on the light he noticed silhouettes of the objects begin to appear, distorted as the subject became further away from the emulsion. He started to experiment with other objects exposing them first to light and called the resulting photos rayographs.

Man Ray's rayographs have a three-dimensional feel with various tones of grey as the three-dimensional subject distorts the light. Fox Talbot's paper negatives are more two-dimensional because the subject, feathers, leaves etc are in direct contact with the paper.

Man Ray, ‘Rayograph’, 1922

Man Ray had photographed everyday objects before, but these unique, visionary images immediately put the photographer on par with the avant-garde painters of the day. Hovering between the abstract and the representational, the rayographs revealed a new way of seeing that delighted the Dadaist poets who championed his work, and that pointed the way to the dreamlike visions of the Surrealist writers and painters who followed.

Man Ray, ‘Rayograph’, 1923

He preferred to use translucent and opaque objects on photosensitive materials. He intentionally used objects that were three dimensional in order to create unusual shadows of the objects on the two dimensional photosensitive surface.

In 1919 László Moholy-Nagy began experimenting with the process of making photograms.

He considered the mysteries of the light effects and the analysis of space as experienced through the photogram to be important principles that he experimentally explored.

Moholy-Nagy proposed that a photogram was like a light painting and in the early 1920's produced several photograms in which the two dimensional surface of the photosensitive paper was exposed using only light from a flashlight.

He also experimented with the concept of motion in the photogram image by actually moving objects during exposure. These ideas at the time were contrary with all of the teaching on the photographic process - lack of vibration or movement during the taking or printing of photographic images. Moholy-Nagy broke the chains of conceptual limitations and expanded photographic possibilities.

László Moholy-Nagy, ‘Self-Portrait’, 1925

“I would think that photogram is a better name than “shadowgraph” because – at least in my experiments – I used or tried to use not alone shadows of solid and transparent and translucent objects but really light effects themselves, e.g. lenses, liquids, crystal and so on.”

László Moholy-Nagy, ‘Photogram’, 1924

He created via manipulation of light and object, memorable images based on the synergy of this combination. His use of non-rigid and non-structured materials as light modulators allowed him to make photograms which were dematerialized in the conventional photographic sense and more about transforming the qualities of light into imagery.

The photogram is known to popularise a distinctive style of photography, involving jagged angles and contrasts and an abstract use of light. “It's like creating an assemblage of sorts on a horizontal plane. There's this strange back and forth, they are uncanny, or strangely familiar. There is always this sense of contact, of contiguity with the real, but at the same time, of the real reformed into something that borders on the unrecognizable.” (Anne Umland)

Preparation for Workshop

Please bring different objects to your workshop with Colin Jackson. The schedule for the workshops is published on the i-cal. Please arrive outside of the store 10 minutes before the start of your session. The objects have to be waste objects that you have found in the streets of Medway. Please bring materials of different structure and texture such as translucent or opaque objects. In the style of Christian Schad look out for worn materials, discarded objects, searching for these things on the streets, your personal environments and in the area of the university. Enjoy the search and be creative with your objects. The more varied materials you will bring to your workshop session the more fun you will have, achieving different visual results.