Daily Photo 3 & A Little Bit on Photograms

"!" (Photogram)

A LITTLE BIT ON PHOTOGRAMS

A photogram is potentially one of the cheapest ways to make photographic images. All you need is any random object (or objects) you want, some light-sensitive paper, and a good imagination (Plus all the darkroom materials, chemicals, and stuff which cost thousands of dollars--but we're assuming here that you have access to this stuff for free. So, yeah...). Apart from the intrinsically complex nature of composition, photograms are very simple to create images. All you need to do is position objects on top of some light-sensitive surface (such as darkroom photo-paper) and shine light on it. Then, you develop the paper and voila!, you have these images that we're showcasing this week on the blog. 

Here's a little bit of history on the photogram from the famous and sometimes academically infamous wikipedia:

Some of the first known photographic images made were photograms. William Henry Fox Talbot called these photogenic drawings, which he made by placing leaves and pieces of material onto sensitised paper, then leaving them outdoors on a sunny day to expose, making an overall dark background and a white outline of the object used.^[3]

From 1843, Anna Atkins produced British Algae: Cyanotype  Impressions in installments, the first book illustrated with photographs. The images were exclusively photograms of botanical specimens. Atkins used Sir John Herschel's cyanotype process, which yields blue images [we will talk about cyanotypes in a future blog].

Photograms were used in the 20th Century by a number of photographers, particularly Man Ray, who called them "rayographs". His style included capitalizing on the stark and unexpected effects of negative imaging, unusual juxtapositions of identifiable objects (such as spoons and pearl necklaces), varying the exposure time given to different objects within a single image, and moving objects as they were exposed.