Photogram

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Photogram with laboratory utensils

The direct exposure of light-sensitive materials such as film or photo paper using the contact method is referred to as a photogram, also known as Schadography or Rayogram . In contrast to photography or luminography , no camera is used.

Manufacturing

Creation of a photogram: A spatially extended light source (1) illuminates objects (2, 3 and 9) that have been placed directly in front of the light-sensitive film. Depending on the distance between the objects and the film, their shadow becomes harder (7) or softer (5). Areas of the film that are completely in the shadow (6) are not blackened. In the case of transparent or translucent objects (8), they are more or less blackened. Areas that are fully exposed (4) are blackened to the maximum.

A photogram is created by placing more or less transparent objects (2, 3 and 9) between a light-sensitive film , photo paper or an electronic sensor and a light source (1) and then exposing them. The spatial expansion of the light source, the distance between the objects and the film and their optical properties determine the contouring of the shadow (4 to 7). If you work with several light sources or move them, further effects are possible.

Examples

Photogram with plants and soil.
Color photogram of lemon slices and tomato plants on cellophane paper, background: enlarged paper in the negative holder of the projector.

The forerunners of the photogram can be found in the early days of photography. The photography pioneers Thomas Wedgwood and William Henry Fox Talbot had made their first photograms as early as 1802 and 1834, respectively, by soaking writing paper with table salt and silver nitrate solution, placing objects on it and exposing them to sunlight. The so-called Talbot resurrected photograms fotogenische drawings (English: Photogenic drawings ), which means "formed by light Drawings".

At the same time, from 1839, the French Hippolyte Bayard developed his "Dessins photogéniques", photograms of plants and woven lace, the American Mathew Carey Lea from 1841 his "Photogenic Drawings of Plants" and Anna Atkins in 1843 her cyanotypes of plants, ferns and Feathers. Her goal was the perfect documentary representation of nature.

The German painter Christian Schad developed what he called “Schadographs” in Zurich from 1918 onwards. Man Ray published his "Champs Délicieux" in Paris from 1922. He referred to the technology as "Rayographs" and used it to implement his Dadaist and surrealist ideas.

The most important exponent of the photogram in the 1920s was the Bauhaus master László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946), who taught from 1923 to 1928 and who created the theoretical and experimental basis for establishing this then new art genre. In this context, his marriage in 1921 to the photographer Lucia Moholy , b. Schulz, who, in connection with her husband, plays an important role in the theory and practice of the photogram. László Moholy-Nagy coined the term photoplastic as an expression for artistic photographic work that results from the combination and interlinking of various graphic and other design elements with photographic work.

In addition to Moholy-Nagy, Schad and Man Ray, El Lissitzky , Jaroslav Rössler, Luigi Veronesi , Kurt Schwitters and Ernst Schwitters, Piet Zwart , Raoul Hausmann , Edmund Kesting and Marta Hoepffner should also be mentioned, who were photogram artists before 1945 and in some cases afterwards emerged.

After 1945, the photogram was rediscovered in Germany by “subjective” and “experimental” photographers. To be mentioned here are Otto Steinert and Schüler, Kilian Breier, Gunther Keusen , Peter Keetman , Heinz Hajek-Halke , Kurt Wendlandt , Chargesheimer , Lotte Jacobi , Roger Humbert, René Mächler, Kurt Kranz, Timm Rautert , Gottfried Jäger , Karl Martin Holzhäuser and Floris Michael Neusüss . From 1963 Floris M. Neusüss expanded his artistic repertoire of the photogram to include his large-format body photograms, his so-called nudograms; later he included elements of the photo painting action and the chemigram. Students of Prof. Neusüss from Kassel, such as Thomas Bachler, Natalie Ital and Tim Otto Roth, continue to work innovatively with this technology today.

From 1968 Gottfried Jäger, Hein Gravenhorst, Kilian Breier , Karl Martin Holzhäuser and Pierre Cordier developed the concept of "generative photography", besides luminograms, pinhole structures or mechanical optical investigations, Jäger's photographic paper works from 1983 on - concrete photograms - which are his very own Making the means of the medium their subject without pursuing iconic or symbolic goals , just like Holzhäuser's light paintings from 1986, which he has taken up and further developed today. Students of Prof. Jäger or Prof. Holzhäuser from Bielefeld, such as Ralf Filges, Hartwig Schwarz , Tom Heikaus or Uwe Meise, continue to work innovatively with this technology today.

In the USA it is above all Georgy Kepes (1906–2001), Nathan Lerner (1913–1997) and Arthur Siegel (1913–1979), all students of Moholy Nagy who emigrated to the USA at the New Bauhaus in Chicago, who take the classic line the language developed at the Bauhaus in their photogram compositions around 1940. Adam Fuss, born in Great Britain in 1961 and living in New York, deserves a mention as a contemporary artist.

Concrete photograms

Today, more than 70 years after Theo van Doesburg's “Manifesto”, the term “concrete” - in photography as in the photogram - is consciously applied to photography. Also refer to Max Bill . Encouraged by the collector Peter C. Ruppert, whose collection "Concrete Art" has been on view in Europe after 1945 in the museum in the Kulturspeicher Würzburg since 2002, an accompanying book entitled "Concrete Photography" was published in 2005. In the 2005 exhibition, a particularly large number of specific photograms by photo artists from 1916 to the present day were shown.

In the history of photography there are several terms around photography: In addition to more well-known terms such as documentary or experimental photography , three major areas are distinguished:

  1. Images (Detecting Photography)
  2. Symbols (performing photography) and
  3. Structural images (image-generating photography).

Gottfried Jäger defines these three areas as follows:

Ad 1: Images, ascertaining photography: This means depicting, reporting, proving, documenting, reproducing, objective, lifelike photography, also called direct, ascertaining photography.

Re 2: Symbols, representational photography: one describes photography that interprets reality, such as subjective, impressive, convincing, commenting, critical, partisan, participating, committed, accusatory or invasive photographs, for example for artistic, advertising or propaganda purposes - with commentary character, who turns things around as the author sees them or wants to see them viewed.

To 3: Structural images, image-generating photography: creation of new image structures, illustration of abstract ideas. One speaks of creative, formative, shaping, constructing, staging, experimenting, abstract, absolute or non-objective photographs. This photography is also called image-creating or image-generating photography, the results of which are called structural images.

In 1989, for the 150th year of the birth of photography, the Kunsthalle Bielefeld presented the exhibition “The photo as an autonomous image - experimental design from 1839 to 1989”. Structural images were thematized, which were summarized under the generic term "autonomous images". The autonomous image finds its definition in artistic practice and art theory of the early 20th century: It is no longer about the imitation or imitative idealization of a natural model, but about design content freely invented by the artist, mostly called abstract or non-objective, whose representational representation new, own artistic criteria.

autonomous photogram
«positive / negative», ulli p., 1999

The image-generating - not abstract or depicting photographs - which existed from the beginning of the history of photography, but for which there was no uniform terminology until 2005, were re-summarized in 2005 in the new book Konkrete Fotografie , accompanying the exhibition in Würzburg, with the same term . In this sense, concrete photographs are not a semantic medium, but an aesthetic object, not a representation, but a presentation, not a reproduction, but a product, do not want to depict anything: they are objects that are based on themselves, independent, authentic, autonomous, autogenous - Photographs of photography. Concrete photographs are not abstractions of something, they are pure photographs that violate elementary requirements of the medium, break rules, attack the apparatus.

Digital photograms

Since 2012 the photo artist Thomas Ruff has been working with the 3D expert Wenzel S. Spingler on a new series called »Photograms«. These refer to the historical photogram, but were created completely digitally by simulating a virtual darkroom. The photo series was exhibited in 2014 in the David Zwirner Gallery in New York.

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Photogram  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ T. Wedgwood, H. Davy: An account of a method of copying paintings upon glass and making profiles by the agency of light upon nitrate of silver, invented by T. Wedgwood, Esq., With observations by H. Davy. In: Journal of the Royal Institution . Volume 1, No. 9, London, June 22, 1802.
  2. ^ Christian Schad Museum
  3. ↑ L. Moholy-Nagy: photography is light design , in: bauhaus, Heft 1, Dessau 1928, p. 9 - By photoplastics Moholy-Nagy did not mean sculptures. In the photoplastic, according to Moholy-Nagy, “the combination of photographic elements with lines and other additions creates unexpected tensions that go far beyond the meaning of the individual parts ... because it is precisely the interlinking of photographically depicted event elements, the simple to complex overlays form themselves into a strange unity ... this unity can appear exhilarating, moving, devastating, satirical, visionary, revolutionary, etc. in its results. "
  4. ↑ a b c d e Gottfried Jäger : Imaging photography. Photography - light graphics - light painting. Origins, concepts and specifics of an art form. DuMont, Cologne 1988, ISBN 3-7701-1860-X .
  5. ↑ a b c Gottfried Jäger, Rolf H. Krauss, Beate Reese: Concrete Photography. Concrete photography. Kerber, Bielefeld 2005, ISBN 3-936646-74-0 .
  6. ↑ Jutta Hülsewig-Johnen, Gottfried Jäger, JA Schmoll called Eisenwerth: The photo as an autonomous image. Experimental design 1839–1989. Hatje-Cantz, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-89322-161-1 .