Photograms...
What is a Photogram/Rayograph?
Photograms or Rayographs are camera-less images created by placing objects on a photo sensitive surface and exposing them to light. Where the object touches the surface it will protect it from the light, leaving a white or pale grey impression (depending on its opacity). If light is able to get underneath the object the surface will change in tone. If there is no protection at all the paper will turn black.
Anna Atkins created photogram-like images using paper that could be exposed in sunlight and developed and fixed in water. Photograms/Rayographs are the result of experiments in the darkroom where chemicals (Developer/Stop/Fix) are used to activate the image which is finally washed in running water. Rayographs are the name given to photograms by the artist Man Ray. Otherwise they are the same type of image.
Photograms or Rayographs are camera-less images created by placing objects on a photo sensitive surface and exposing them to light. Where the object touches the surface it will protect it from the light, leaving a white or pale grey impression (depending on its opacity). If light is able to get underneath the object the surface will change in tone. If there is no protection at all the paper will turn black.
Anna Atkins created photogram-like images using paper that could be exposed in sunlight and developed and fixed in water. Photograms/Rayographs are the result of experiments in the darkroom where chemicals (Developer/Stop/Fix) are used to activate the image which is finally washed in running water. Rayographs are the name given to photograms by the artist Man Ray. Otherwise they are the same type of image.
Many photogram artists today know that they owe to an element of chance the discovery of the photographic process called photogram. It was the surrealist, Man Ray, who discovered this method once he placed a small glass funnel, graduate, and a thermometer over an unexposed piece of paper that has been previously by accident submerged in the developer. Once he turned on the light and noticed the silhouettes of the objects starting to appear, the ‘AHA moment’ and the beginning of the experimentation flourished. The resulting photos he called rayographs. But, it was the Hungarian artist, Moholy-Nagy, who coined the term photogram, also known as the cameraless photography. The process is fairly simple. It utilizes the rudimentary photograph principles, the placement of the objects on a photosensitive surface and the brief exposure to light, creating an obstructed x-ray image.
The recent boom of artists and photographers who are going back to the darkroom and prefer the experimentations of the past to the digitalized image creation is changing the photography scene and at the same time, the richness of experimentation and play feeds our eyes with beautiful images. Continue reading and find out the top artists that use this process of the past, and who are not afraid to play and who don’t need a camera to create their beautiful images.
The recent boom of artists and photographers who are going back to the darkroom and prefer the experimentations of the past to the digitalized image creation is changing the photography scene and at the same time, the richness of experimentation and play feeds our eyes with beautiful images. Continue reading and find out the top artists that use this process of the past, and who are not afraid to play and who don’t need a camera to create their beautiful images.
Floris Neususs...Our list needs to begin with one of the leading photographers of today who has dedicated his career and practice to the extension, and exploration of both the practice and the theory concerning the photogram. Bringing renewed ambition to the photogram process, in both scale and visual treatment, the photographer Floris Neusüss, is a well-known teacher and writer of camera-less photography. His own work explores the opposite worlds of black and white, light and shadow, movement and stillness, presence and absence, and the translation of the three-dimensional objects into two. By the removal of the object from their physical context, Neusüss challenges and encourages the viewer to think about the essence of form. Most of his works are submerged in the feeling of surreal detachment and often explore the subconscious, mythology, history and nature.
Featured image in slider: Floris Neusüss – Untitled, Kassel, 1967. Image via vam.ac.uk |
Susan Derges...Susan Derges turned to camera-less photography after she experienced the frustration and the separation of the subject and the viewer that in her view traditional photography creates. Her first experimentation with the camera-less created images occurred while she was in Japan. Exposing her images to the sound waves of different frequencies, and prior to that, sprinkling carborundum powder directly onto photographic emulsion, Derges created ghostly black and white images of natural order and chaos. Involving the nature in her world, her body of work in the series River Taw, where produced at night. The artist placed the photographic paper on the riverbed allowing the images to be exposed to the light of the moon, added by the flashlight. Nature for Derges becomes her darkroom and we can only stand in awe and admire the beauty of her images. Always experimenting and researching the image creation without the aid of the camera, Derges explores the relationship between nature and the human beings, the constant connection and separation and her images convey metaphysical and metaphorical layers of meanings.
Featured image in slider: Susan Derges –Untitled, detail. Image via wikipedia.com |
Dan Peyton...Dan Peyton is one of the cyanotype process purists. Creating his images on the coated paper and then exposing it to the sunlight, he surrenders to a subtle element of the unknown. The height of the sun, contours of the object, the age of the chemicals, all contribute to the making of his images that are reduced to the shadow like, powerful and simplified symbols. Reminiscent of the architectural blueprints, Peyton’s subject matter often includes birds and flags. It is, in fact, the shadow of the object that creates the image, and as such a certain philosophical and metaphysical element can be applied to his blue images. The simplicity of his images is governed by his choice of the historical process originally developed in the 19th Century.
Featured image in slider: Dan Peyton – Forsythia Elegy, 2015. Image via static.wixstatic.com |
Ethan Jantzer...Combining the intense flashes of light, and the capture of the shadows on large sheets of photographic film with the use of highly sensitive material, requires total darkness. This leaves the artist Ethan Jantzer almost senseless, as the sense of touch is the only sense left for him to rely on in the dark. By casting light from various angles and distances, Jantzer is able to manipulate and to an extent control the shadow he captures. The subtle limitations of the photogram process, allow for the subtle surface details to become the focal point within the finished image. By reducing his images to nothing more than a series of shadows and silhouettes, Jantzer’s works exists and levitates between a realistic and an abstract. The study of light, color, and texture, stretched the process and the limitations of photography.
Featured image in slider: Ethan Jantzer – Untitled, detail. Image via static.wixstatic.com |
Thomas Ruff...Thomas Ruff’s recent works, explore, similar to the artists already mentioned in this list, the photogram process. His photogram series depict abstract shapes, lines and spirals in seemingly random formulations with varying degrees of transparency and illumination. Owning in his collection two photograms by Art Siegel inspired Ruff to try this process himself. Realizing from the beginning the restriction of the size of photograms that are influenced by the paper size, Ruff aims to produce large-scale photograms, and to create modern photogram images. The custom-made software program does the process of exposure and connects the artist’s photogram images to the images of Ruff’s zyclesseries, a body of work created by the computer-generated abstract line drawings based on algorithms.
What seems to be the element that joins all the eight artists from this list is their love for the process and the need for the thrill of the experimentation and the wait for the end result. Almost like an alchemist studio, the artists that practice and explore the limits of the camera-less image production, without a doubt, reference the past but still manage to create highly innovative and original pieces. Featured image in slider: Thomas Ruff – phg.07, 2013-, C-print, detail. Image via photography-now.com |
How do you make a Photogram?
Firstly you choose a series of objects. You arrange these objects on a piece of light sensitive photographic paper. This is then exposed to light for a few seconds. The paper is then taken over to the wet area of the darkroom and soaked in a series of chemicals.
The main chemicals used in the darkroom are developer, which causes the silver iodide of the paper emulsion to darken if it has been exposed to light, and fixer, which removes the undeveloped silver iodide from the emulsion. A chemical used to completely stop the development process is called stop bath, and is used between the developer stage and the fixer stage.
The main chemicals used in the darkroom are developer, which causes the silver iodide of the paper emulsion to darken if it has been exposed to light, and fixer, which removes the undeveloped silver iodide from the emulsion. A chemical used to completely stop the development process is called stop bath, and is used between the developer stage and the fixer stage.