Photograms

A photogram is an image that is created without a camera. Objects are put onto light sensitive paper in a dark room and then exposed to light.

Things you will need:

• Light sensitive paper
• Objects
• A dark room
• A light source
• Chemicals (developer, stop bath, fix)
• Trays (for the chemicals)
• Tongs at each station
• Water

Step 1: Make sure before you start that everything you will be using is set up. The room that you are working in needs to be dark, or the light sensitive paper will be over-exposed.

Step 2: Arrange the items onto the paper, and when you are happy with the design, expose the objects to the light for about 5-10 seconds.

Step 3: Make sure the normal light is turned off and the red light is on before taking your objects off of the paper, then put it into the developer tray for 1 minute. Make sure that the chemical gets all over the photogram.

Step 4: After 1 minute, remove the paper from the stop bath with tongs and let the developer drain off of the paper.

Step 5: Then place it in the stop bath for 30 seconds, making sure that it gets all over the paper. After 30 seconds has passed, take it from the stop bath with tongs, and let it drain off again.

Step 6: Place in the fix bath and after 2 minutes, put it into the sink with clean water for about 5-10 minutes. Let the image dry. Done!

Man Ray

Man Ray (Real name Emmanuel Radnitzky) was an artist, a photographer, and he also made photograms, which, when made by himself, he called “Rayographs”. He was born in South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on August 27^th, 1890, but he spent most of his life in Paris, France.

Throughout his career, he released very few details of his life to the public. He also denied that he had any other name than Man Ray. In 1912, his family changed their last name from Radnitzky to Ray because of anti-Semitism and ethnic discrimination. Emmanuel’s nickname was “Manny”, and so he changed his name to Ray and started to use the name Man Ray.

He studied at Brooklyn’s Boys’ High School, where he learnt techniques and improved on his art. Art fascinated him and he frequently visited the local art museums. When he graduated, he was offered a scholarship in architecture but turned it down, deciding to follow a career in art. His parents even rearranged where they lived so that Man Ray could have a studio.

In July 1921, he went to live in Paris and shortly after arriving he fell in love with an artist’s model called Kiki de Montparnasse. But Man Ray was forced to return to America and lived in Los Angeles, California due to WW2. He lived there from 1940 to 1951. Just days after moving, Man Ray met a first-generation American of Romanian-Jewish lineage called Juliet Browner. She was an experienced artists model and she was trained in dancing. They started living together very quickly after meeting, and in  1946, they married in a double wedding with their friends Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning. While back in Paris he got a lung infection and died on November 18th 1976.

Objectively, this image shows a black background, where the two top corners have gone white due to some exposure to light whilst making it. From the top left hand corner to the bottom right hand corner, there is a flower and stem, which is in an 'S' shape. There are a few little branches with leaves growing from the stem. In the top right corner there is a seashell and to the left of this there is a flower. Under this there is what looks like a roll of film or a photo negative and a tiny Eiffel Tower. The 'S' shaped stem is under this, separating this from what is at the bottom of the page. In the bottom left corner there is a leaf, and to the right of this the word 'here' is spelt and it is in a loop of ribbon or string.

Anna Atkins

Anna Atkins (Maiden name Anna Children) was born March 16^th 1799 in Tonbridge, Kent. Many people claim that she was the first woman to create a photograph and one of the first people to publish a book with photographic images. Her father, John George Children, was a scientist and as Anna became close to him after the death of her mother, she “received an unusually scientific education for a woman of her time.”

After marrying John Pelly Atkins in 1825, she collected dried plants as she was pursuing her interests in botany. Atkins and her husband became friends with William Henry Fox Talbot. From him, she learnt two of his photography inventions. Calotypes and “photogenic drawing” (photograms). Some say that Atkins was the first female photographer and she had a camera by 1841. But other sources say that Talbot’s wife, Constance Talbot was the first female photographer. However, no photographs which were taken with a camera by either of them have survived, so we may never know.

A friend of Atkins and her Husband called Sir John Herschel invented cyanotype, a photographic process, in 1842. Atkins decided to use this method with algae (specifically, seaweed), and made cyanotype photograms which were contact printed “by placing the unmounted dried-algae original directly on the cyanotype paper.

She had three self-published volumes of a book called, Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions. The first one was published in 1843, and the last one in 1853. Only 17 copies of the book are still known to exist.

In 1897, Atkins died at Halstead Palace because of "paralysis, rheumatism, and exhaustion". She was 72.

Objectively, this image shows a blue background with a plant over the top. There is a label underneath this which names the plant.

Susan Derges

Susan Derges was born in 1955 London. From 1973 to 1976, she studied painting at Chelsea college of Art and Design and from 1977 to 1979, she studied at he Slade School of Art. After this, she developed an interest in photography and explored ways and techniques of cameraless photography. Derges made photograms by exposing images directly onto photographic paper. She lived and worked in Japan from 1981 to 1985, carrying out research at Tsukuba University. Derges also received a Rotary Foundation Award in 1981 and a JVC Award in 1984. In 1986 she decided to move back to London and lived there for 5 years until 1991. In 1992, Derges moved to Dartmoor in Devon. She received a South West Arts Award in 1993 and was made a lecturer in Media Arts at the University of Plymouth in Exeter. From 1997 to 1999, Derges worked as an external examiner for the BA in Fine Art.

Susan Derges first tried cameraless photography while she was living in Japan. Her work called Chladni Figures from 1985 was made by sprinkling carborundum powder directly onto photographic emulsion, where it was then exposed to sound waves at different frequencies. 

In 1991, her work The Observer and the Observed was images which appeared as droplets of water containing faces. It also showed her own face with small droplets suspended in her view. 

In 1997, Derges placed photographic paper onto a river bed and exposed the images through ambient light, helped by the use of a flash gun. This work was called the River Taw series.

For her Under the Moon series, Derges used photographs of the moon and combined them with water and branch patterns that were exposed to sound vibrations in the darkroom.

Objectively, this image is grey. There is a pattern all over the paper as it was submerged in water while being exposed to the light, so there are ripples from the water. There are also shadows of some leaves and branches, which would've been above the water to get this effect.

My attempt:

For my attempt at photograms, I used various objects such as; marbles, paper clips, keys, glow-in-the-dark moons & stars, chains, small toys, etc. I liked doing photograms much more than pinhole photography, as I find that there is much more control and it's a lot easier to get clear, defined images.

This was my first test strip. I exposed the image for too long, is why most of the objects are not clear. I was not happy with this result, so I tried again.

My second test strip went a lot better. I exposed it for about 3 seconds, which means that the objects are much more well-defined. I was much happier with this test strip as you can clearly see each object.

This was done on a bigger sheet of paper. The star in the top right corner was made from quite thick plastic, which is why it's so defined. The other star and the moon are both glow-in-the-dark, which means that they absorb the light, making them a lot more faint. This was not really the effect that I wanted, but I did not take into account the material that it was made from before making this photogram.

This was my final attempt at a photogram. It was done on size A4 paper. The object in the middle is a keychain that I made when I was younger from beads and string. I thought that the design would make an interesting effect for the photogram and I was pleased with the results.

Overall, I was very pleased with my photograms. I thought that it was much better than doing pinhole photography because of the control. It was much easier to get a good image.