Photograms

Photograms

 

A photogram is an image that is produced in the dark-room without the use of a camera or a negative. A photogram is created by placing different materials and objects onto light sensitive paper and then exposing that paper to the light. In the 1920's photograms becamer popular with different artists such as Man Ray and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy as it was an easy way to create good images without a camera. Once you have exposed the paper to the light (in a dark room) with the objects still on the paper, you remove the objects and process the paper and then an image will be revealed. 

 

In this photogram a pair of headphones and some buttons have been placed onto the light sensitive paper and then exposed. It is clear that the paper hasn't been over-exposed otherwise the paper would have been completely black meaning too much light was exposed.

 

 

My Photograms

 Below are some of my own photograms that I did. This was the first time I had done any photograms and so the first picture isn't as good as the second. I tried layering different objects such as leaves, flowers and string onto my light sensitive paper as I thought they would give me some interesting patterns.

 

 

For this photogram I didn't really think about my composition as much as I should have and so it doesn't look very organised. When it came to exposing the paper to light I had a problem with transferreing the paper (with the objects still on) to the dark room and so the objects look more like they have just been thrown onto the paper. The paper wasn't straight when I exposed it and so bit of the image have been cut out.

 

Due to my first photogram not going as well as I had expected I tried to do another one. This time I layered my objects onto the light sensitive paper in the dark room so that I didn't disturb the composition by trying to move it. I feel that this photogram looks a lot better than the first one as the composition looks more organised and purposful and therefore the patterns are revealed more clearly. This time when I exposed the paper to the light I made sure it was straight and so all of the image has been revealed.

 

 

Even though I enjoyed the photograms it isn't something that i would want to explore further with my project as I feel the images are all too basic and quite similar.