The history of photography is punctuated by practitioners who have developed a technique or style that has become a part of art history. The first period of “photogram” exploration was to gain scientific record of natural objects (do a web search for Anna Atkins). Anna Atkins (1799-1871) was an English botanist and, some argue, the very first female photographer, most noted for using photography in her books on various plants. Examples from her book Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions (1843) are shown below. Only 13 copies of the handwritten book are known to exist. Note the blue and white tones of the cyanotype process.
The second period was a rediscovery of the artistic potential as illustrated by Christian Schad, Man Ray and Lazlo Moholy-Nagy in the Dada, Surrealist and Constructivist periods of art, respectively. Two examples of Man Ray's "Rayograms" are seen below:
More recently, photographers have utilized the photogram as a means of artistic expression to produce a wide variety of designs and surreal imagery such as the images by Anton Perich who created full-sized photograms of his muse Andrea Langdon as seen in the Triangle Project in Copenhagen.
(above) photogram by Anton Perich
(above) photogram by Mark Arbeit
See Mark Arbeit discuss his photograms: https://vimeo.com/86190654
MATERIALS NEEDED:
1.) Ilford Multigrade photo paper
2.) your own items that you will use to arrange creatively on the photo paper to create two (2) distinct photograms during class
NOTE: The two images above show the items set on the paper, but remember that you cannot open your photo paper in daylight or even very dim room light, ONLY in the darkroom under the red/orange safelights.
In order to practice creative arrangements of your items, do so on a plain piece of typing or copy paper.
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