Chemigram
A chemistry gram (from “chemistry” and grámma “letter”, “writing”) is an image that is created on photo paper using developers and fixers . The chemical properties of materials from photography are used to paint pictures with them in daylight. A further development of this painting technique are chemograms by the photo artist Josef H. Neumann in 1974 and photobatics .
"Chimigrams" were invented by the Belgian artist Pierre Cordier in the 1950s and named by him in the French-speaking world.
history
Johann Schulze is considered to be the first to produce a chemigram-like image. In 1725 he succeeded in doing this with the help of opaque paper and a bottle of silver nitrate. Frenchman Hippolyte Bayard made another chemigram-like image in 1839 while doing sensitization tests. In the 1930s and 1940s, Edmund Kesting and the Frenchman Maurice Tabard produced pictures and paintings with developer and fixer on photo paper . However, it was the Belgian artist Pierre Cordier (born 1933) who was most important in the development of chemical charts. In his early years he was one of the few practicing artists in 1956, and contributed to the further development of chemigrams by further elaborating the technical and aesthetic possibilities. In 1958 he coined the term chimigram in French ( chemigram in English and Dutch, chemigram in German, chimigramma in Italian, and quimigrama in Spanish and Portuguese), which is still widely used today. In the mid-1970s, Josef H. Neumann developed so-called chemograms in which optical elements were first incorporated and then chemicals were applied.
Manufacturing
With the chemigram, a developer or fixer is used to paint directly onto the photo paper. Since this happens in daylight, the photo paper reacts immediately with the respective chemicals. The liquids can be applied with brushes, cotton swabs etc. or blown with straws. If you paint with a developer, the paper immediately turns black, after which it is briefly rinsed, fixed and finally soaked. When applying the fixer, only a small lighter coloration of the paper can be seen. After an exposure time of about one minute, the paper is placed in the developer tray. The unpainted surfaces blacken. Then it is watered again, then fixed and finally watered.
In contrast to chemograms , the first step in chemograms is to expose images in the darkroom and then process them with chemicals in daylight.
All high-quality printing processes are also suitable for this technique . This term subsumes the historical photographic techniques. An easy-to-manufacture variant are z. B. Chemigrams based on the cyanotype .
Individual evidence
- ^ Wilhelm Gemoll: Greek-German school and hand dictionary. Munich / Vienna 1965.
- ^ Gottfried Jäger, Karl Martin Holzhäuser: Generative photography. Theoretical foundation, compendium and examples of photographic image design. Otto Maier Verlag, Ravensburg, 1975, p. 142.
- ↑ definition . In: Pierre Cordier .
- ↑ Hannes Schmidt: Comments on the chemograms by Josef Neumann. Exhibition in the photography studio gallery of Prof. Pan Walther. in: Photo press. Issue 22, 1976, p. 6.
- ^ Gabriele Richter: Joseph H. Neumann. Chemograms. in: Color Photo. Issue 12, 1976, p. 24.
literature
- Gottfried Jäger, Karl Martin Holzhäuser: Generative photography. Theoretical foundation, compendium and examples of photographic image design. Otto Maier Verlag, Ravensburg, 1975.