Photograms

A photogram is an image created without a camera, objects are placed on a light sensitive surface and then they are exposed to light. The areas not covered by the objects turn black. The parts that don't receive light can turn white/grey it depends how transparent the objects are.

You need: light sensitive paper, some objects, chemicals (Developer, stop bath, fix), and tongs at each station.

Step 1. Setup the chemicals and the items you will be using

Step 2. Turn off all lights and make sure the doors are shut properly

Step 3. Take the paper and arrange the items

Step 4. Expose the paper to light for a few seconds

Step 5. Then develop the image, developer 1 minute, stop bath 30 seconds, fix 2 minutes. 

Step 6. Make sure you soak the image for 5 minutes to wash all the chemicals off. 

Man Ray 

Man ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky) was born in 27th of august 1890, he spent most of his career in Paris, he worked with a variety of mediums. He died November 18th 1976.

In this picture Ray has used a single subject centred in the image, it doesn't take up much room resulting in a lot of negative space, making the image very dark yet he has managed to capture the delicate features of the object. Due to the darkness and the loneliness of the object the image may be conveying sadness to those who observe it. The flower is not standing straight as you would expect but is rather set at an angle, it makes the resulting photograph more creative yet may be highlighting how something unusual and unexpected result in being on your own and isolation.

Christian Schad  

Christian was born in 1894, he was a German painter and experimented with photograms. He died in 1982.

Many different items, a variety of shapes and sizes are arranged in this image, it gives a chaotic feels as if they have just been dropped there, though they have been arranged in such a way that there is not much negative space in the image, enough to clearly make out each item, yet not too much to make the photo feel empty. Several forks appear in this picture, several are distorted or bent giving  a more abstract feel.

 

Abelardo Morell

Abelardo was born in 1948, in Cuba, he then immigrated with his family to the US in 1962.

This image is simple, made up of two different sized jugs positioned next to each other. Considering the jugs have been positioned pointing at each other it seems almost confrontational, the difference in size might be highlighting power or ever weath between different classes of people, even individuals against corporations. The direct comparision it draws could be interpretted as quite powerful even though it's a relatively simple arrangement, much of its meaning is left to the viewer to decide.














My attempts at photograms. 

For these images I was experimenting with the objects I brought in. I think my photograms turned out quite well, for the last photo I used a crystal with a wire fairy as I thought it would work well with the theme weird and wonderful. I wasn't sure it would work but you can clearly see the fairy. I tried to recreate the same compositions as the photograpers I have chosen. Both Man ray and Schad used flowers and leaves in their photograms. I tried to experiment with negative space because in Morells photograms
                                                        he has a lot of negative space