The Photogram - a History

“Captured Shadows”

“The shadows that things make The things that shadows make”

by

Les Rudnick

Photograms after WW II

Arthur Siegel, American, (1913-1978). was born in Detroit. After receiving his undergraduate education at the University of Michigan and Wayne State University he taught photography at Wayne State. At the age of 24 he obtained a scholarship to study with Moholy-Nagy and Gyorgy Kepes at the New Bauhaus in Chicago. Siegel produced a wide variety of photograms some similar to moire patterns and others combining many circular images that appear to be floating at different heights above a sea of neutral gray background. Siegel's later photograms were more simple and conceptual and Siegel used combination printing to create some of his later photograms. The photogram (1948) [Zig Zags, Shadows (23 1/2 x 19 1/2" 59.6 x 49.5 cm) in [Sotheby's Phtoographs from the Colllection of Nancy Richardson, New York, Tuesday October 16, 2007] is a multilayered abstract photogram. Bars and Shadows" was also made in 1948 and provides contrast to Zig Zags as an expressive use of the photogram process. The photogram, was for Siegel and Moholy-Nagy fundamental to the understanding of photography. [Sotheby's Phtoographs from the Colllection of Nancy Richardson, New York, Tuesday October 16, 2007, p50.]

He returned to Detroit and worked as a photographer for Life, Fortune and Colliers magazines and also for the Farm Security Administration and The office of War Information. In 1945 Siegel was asked by Moholy-Nagy to head the photography department at the Institute of Design. In 1949 he left the Institute and again spent 18 years exploring color photography and doing commercial work and photojournalism. In 1967 he was hired by Aaron Siskind at the Institute and by 1971 became chair of the photography department. [Museum of Contemporary Photography, http://www.mocp.org/collections/permanent/siegel_arthur.php].

Margaret De Patta (1903-1964), American, studied painting and metalworking and began jewelry making and design in San Francisco about 1935. She met László Moholy-Nagy in San Francisco during a visit he made in 1939 and after this meeting she began to create photograms. She attended the School of Design in Chicago during 1940 and 1941.

Elsa Kula (1918- ) American, born in New York. She studied at the School of Design in Chicago from 1939-1942, there she took Light and Color Workshops with László Moholy-Nagy and Gyorgy Kepes. It was here that she made collaborative photograms with her classmate and future husband David Pratt.

David Pratt (1917-1987) American was a student at Chicago's School of Design, where he created photograms with Elsa Kula in the early 1940s. He is best known for his innovative furniture designs.

Bernard Siegel (1916-1997), American born in Detroit, Michigan. He is mainly known for "solargrams", photographs created by exposing objects directly onto photographic film and then printing these images to give a reversal of the original photogram image. At least one solargram was produced in 1948.

Ralph Steiner (1899-1986), American, studied at the Clarence H. White School of Photography in New York from 1921-1922. Steiner began doing commercial photography and was fortunate enough to meet Alfred Stieglitz and Paul Strand. His photography was mostly straight architectural photography, however, he like many other creative photographers made photograms. (e.g. The Beater and the Pan, 1921).

George Barford, hired to the School of Design in 1939, collaborated with László Moholy-Nagy on a series of photograms.

Franz Roh (1890-1965), (German) was encouraged to pursue photography by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, after working as a historian of photography until about 1926. He studied in Germany and Switzerland. He produced experimental photographic works, including photograms from about 1927-1933.

Other Europeans who experimented with cameraless imagery include:

Frederick Sommer (1905-1999), born in Angri, Italy. Summer was a multi-talented artist having created unique work in music, art, architecture as well as photography. He is well know for his surrealist collages and cameraless abstract images. While traveling with Aaron Siskind in 1948, they came across a abandoned hospital in Jerome, Arizona. Sommer did not take a camera but found a couple of old X-rays and upon returning home made "Found Negative", a surreal image that looks almost like a photomicrograph of peeling paint or a corroded metal. The image has a three dimensional quality. This photogram would serve as a precursor to images that Sommer created in the late 1950s using soot, paint and other materials to create synthetic negatives.
e.g. Sand on Glass (1962) 13 3/8 x 10 1/2

Raoul Hausmann (1886-1971) Austrian, born in Vienna, was a sculptor and writer and was a co-founder of Berlin Dada in 1917. He developed the photo collage within the next year. Although originally a painter, he gave up painting in 1923 in favor of exploring the many possibilities of experimental photography. In 1946, Hausmann began to incorporate photograms into his photo collages. Hausmann referred to photograms as "a technical form similar to abstract painting that belongs only conditionally to the field of photographic vision." Hausmann is also credited with inventing the photomontage. Photomontage is created when the results of a photographic collage is rephotographed thereby creating an original negative of the composition which is then converted to a photographic print. Hausmann worked with other German Dadaists - George Grosz, John Heartfield and Hannah Hoch on photocollage using readily available photographic materials from published materials.

Raffaele Baldi (1905 - ) an architectural photographer met Filippo Tommasso Marinetti, the leader of the Futurist movement in 1930. Baldi experimented with the photogram (and photomontage) as a technique to produce what would provide more abstraction than he could using conventional architectural photography. One photogram, entitled "Linear Harmonics" is a unique combination of shadows and floating design in combination on the two-dimensional photographic paper. [Sotheby's Phtoographs from the Colllection of Nancy Richardson, New York, Tuesdy October 16, 2007, p50.]

Myron Kozman ( - ) created several black and white and brown toned silver gelatin photograms in 1938,

William Keck ( - ) produced at least one silver-gelatin blaclk and white photogram in 1939.

Allen Porter ( - ) also produced at least one black and white silver-gelatin photogram in about 1940. This image was diffuse of a free form shape.

Max Pritikin ( - ) in 1948 created a photogram entitled "Leaves in which a vignetted dark central space contains unsharp images of several leaves giving the impression of leaves blown by the wind or floating above the surface of the paper.

Lois Field ( - ) produced several black and white silver-gelatin photograms in1949. Images appear to be from cut paper shapes and the juxtapositionn gives the impression of three-dimentional space and shadows of shapes.

Gyorky Kepes (1906-2001) was of Hungarian descent and educated at the Budapest Royal Academy of Fine Arts. His early interests in painting turned to filmmaking and photography. He has produced some of the most amazing photograms this author has seen. At the exhibit Taken by Design the quality and uniqueness of Kepes images was apparent. His book, Language of Vision, published in 1944 provides a treatise on the organizing principles for learning basic design. He stressed both the needed organization to convert a visual image into a practical design and the value of experimentation to create new realities. This text was very influential in describing the principles of the Bauhaus.

Kepes in his book "Language of Vision" (published in 1944) states that "Visual experience is more than the experience of pure sensory qualities. Visual sensations are interwoven with memory overlays. Each visual configuration contains a meaningful text, evokes associations of things, events; creates emotional and conscious responses." [Gyorky Kepes, "Language of Vision", p200] This book describes many of the principles of the Bauhaus and Kepes' articulation of his theories of vision.

Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) a German Dadaist painter and sculptor, born in Hanover, Germany. Schwitters art included works in Constructivism and Surrealism. In 1918 he constructed his first collages. His work included works made from found objects. This is reminiscent of Christian Schad's use of found and discarded items in some of the first modern photograms. Schwitters fled Nazi Germany, as did Moholy-Nagy in 1937 because his work was banned as "degenerate art." He was later forced to flee to Norway and then again to England where he died.

Ernst Eduard Friedrich Schwitters (1918-1996) German, born in Hanover, lived in Norway, a photographer influenced by Moholy-Nagy. Produced a series of photograms from 1932-1934. Photograms are visually influenced by Moholy-Nagy, but unique in their own way. more contrasty and distinct, yet surreal. The Kurt and Ernest Schwitters Stiftung was created in 2001 to preserve and manage their photographic archives.[Ernst Schwitters in Norway Photography, Hatze Cantz, ISBN 3775715266]

Alexander Rodchenko (1891-1956) Russian avant-garde artist, began taking photographs in 1924.

Robert Heinecken (1931-2006) lived in Chicago, Illinois, created a photogram, entitled L is for Lemon Slices, in 1971 by using X-rays from a hospital X-ray machine. Photograms created using only the energy (formally light refers to the humanly visible wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum) from X-rays produce a stark and sometimes very delicate image of natural objects that cannot be made in any other way. Seeing through objects that are normally viewed as opaque is a contradiction to our normal thought about an object, just as in a conventional photogram on photosensitive paper, the negative imagery is in its own way abstract.

Heinecken exhibited his work widely throughout his career. He had over 60 one-person exhibitions of his work from 1964 to his recent death, including exhibits at the International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House in Rochester, NY., the Art Institute of Chicago, Center of Photography at the University of Arizona, in Tucson, the Witkin Gallery, NY, and many individual and group exhibits in Japan, Germany, England, Taiwan, Canada, China, and Austria. His publications and portfolios that contain photograms include Recto/Verso, published by Landweber/Artists, Berkeley, CA, a portfolio of 12 original Cibachrome photograms, 1988., He/She, 1980, Are You Rea, 1968, Heinecken, edited by James Enyeart, Friends of Photography, Carmel, CA and Light Gallery, New York, NY, Very Cliche, 1978. [http://www.landweber.com/heinecken_cv.html]

Heinecken taught photography at the University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Art where he created the graduate program in photography; the Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL; Columbia College, Chicago, IL; Harvard University, at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; the San Francisco Art Institute and at the State University of New York at Buffalo, NY. He also gave many presentations to accompany various exhibitions worldwide.

Some of his photograms were created by using the image information from both sides of a single page from various magazines. This multi-image photogram superimposed both the visual/pictorial information and the text that appeared on either of the two sides of the magazine page. Heinecken was a perceptual genius in his ability to continually find unique pages which when printed through produced meaningful commentary on many contemporary subjects. These images use the positive as a negative for the resulting photogram image. This approach stems from the earliest of Talbot's images wherein an image on thin tissue paper was created that could them be "printed through" or the technique of oiling the paper print so that it became transleucent so as to be able to create a print.

There have been several commentaries on Heinecken's images that can be read at http://www.landweber.com/rv_writers_2.html including comments on images from Recto/Verso by Joyce Fernandes, Ann Tucker, Andy Grundberg and Julia Scully and Bill Jay.

Eli Lissitzky (1890-1941) Russian, created gelatin-silver photograms, mostly during the 1920s. Lissitzky was a leading member of the Russian avant-garde during the two decades beginning in 1910. Lissitzky traveled to Germany beginning in 1922 through 1925. His motivation was to build international ties between Russia and Europe. During this time in Germany he learned of the photogram work of Moholy-Nagy and others and brought these concepts back to Russia. His creativity in not only photography, but also painting, and architecture contributed to the new Russian modernism movement at the time. His work in photography was not only via the photogram but he utilized the photogram in advertisements for Pelikan ink in 1924. Aware of the creative aspects of the photogram from the work of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Lissitzky was able to create new conceptual product advertisements. Lissitzky met Kurt Schwitters, who introduced him to Sophie Kuppers and Schwitters led him into a collaboration in 1923 with the Dutch artist Vilmos Huszar on a photogram that was published in Schwitter's Dada journal "Merz." [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=458995907228]

Lissitzky was Jewish, and he began his artistic career by illustrating Yiddish children's books. These efforts were aimed at promoting Jewish culture and religion in Russia, during a period when Russia had repealed its antisemitic laws. Lissitzky's early photographs have not been studied extensively [Drutt, ] due to the fact that much of his work was neither signed or dated. He is however, well known for his Soviet propaganda poster encouraging the russians to construct more tanks to stop Hitler's Nazi military machine. The Bauhaus, Constructivist abd DeStill movements were influenced by Lissitzky's works.[http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/El_Lissitzky]

Jaromir Funke (1896-1945) Czech, was creating black and white, silver bromide photographs via the camera from about 1923 through 1929. He was an influential member of several photographic societies in Prague during the 1920s-1940s and he exhibited in international salons from 1924-1938. His abstract compositions, created in Prague, consisted of the shadows of generally recognizable objects such as statuary, "Still Life with Bust by Zdenek Rykr', and bottles. These were apparently made by using natural light through a window with the objects placed on a windowsill or table in combination with white mat board. It is reported that he briefly experimented with the photogram in 1926, producing only six prints. These were never exhibited during his lifetime. Apparently Funke began experiments with the photogram in response to the acclaim that had been given to Man Ray for his work with the photogram. Funke was also probably aware of the work being created by László Moholy-Nagy as his work began to appear in Czech periodicals and exhibits beginning about 1927. Matthew S. Witkovsky, "Jaromir Funke's Abstract Photo series of 1927-1929: History in the Making" in History of Photography, Autumn 2005, Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, Abington, UK, pp 228-239. Shadows were primary compositional components of Funke's photography as well as design elements in his photograms. Funke was a Czech modernist and his abstract photogram images were among the best produced during the period following World War I. He also taught photography in Prague and Bratslava during this time.

Umbo (Otto Umbehr) (1902-1980), was born in Dusseldorf and was one of the most stylistically influential photographers in Europe during the 1920s. He was educated at the Weimar Bauhaus from 1921-1923 and was influenced by the aesthetic of Johannes Itten. Like Itten he believed that "artistic perception requires three movements: seeing, feeling and recognizing". Herbert Molderings "Umbo's Aestetic", in History of Photography, Autumn 2005, Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, Abington, UK, pp240-255. In 1926 he open and operated a portrait studio in Berlin until 1934 and also worked for the German photographic agency, Deutsche Photodienst, known as Dephot. Dephot is considered to have pioneered photojournalism. [About: photography, directory of notable photograhers, Umbo (Otto Umbehr)] See also, [http://www.clevelandart.org/exhibit/legacy/bios/bios-uz.html]. HIs approach to photograms was that of a combination of drawing and collage. Pieces of paper, string and grit were used to produce photograms of two-dimensional objects - simple drawings of female heads and images titled "Grit and String Painting, 1928". Rodchenko was impressed by the photograms being made by Umbo and began to make similar photograms himself. See Magdalena Dabrowski, Leah Dickerman, Peter Galasi, Aleksandr Rodchenko, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1998, p117.

Curtis Moffat (1887-1949) – was born in New York but moved to England in the late 1920s. Although originally a painter, in the 1920s and 1930s Moffat explored photography including the use of three color gelatin pigment printing to create three color rayographs. He was an assistant to Man Ray and it was during this time that he probably developed proficiency and an interest in creating images by making photograms.

Floris Michael Neususs (1937 - ) German - has produced a wide variety of photograms as well as a book entitled "Das Fotogramm in der Kunst des 20 Jahrhunderts" Neususs has produced photograms of the entire human body by placing the model over the photosensitive surface and exposing the paper using overhead lights. He creates monochromatic large-scale flower like images that are decorative and mysterious”. [Floris M. Neususs, Das Fotogramm in der Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, Die andere Seite der Bilder - Fotografie ohne Kamera].

Pablo Picasso ( - )and the French photographer André Villiers created a series of photograms by combining landscape and botanical photographs taken by Villiers and cutouts prepared by Picasso of fauna and other imaginary objects. These resulted in a series of lithographs entitled Diurnes (1962).

Dora Maar (1907-1997) was born Theodora Markovitch. She attended the Union Centrale des Arts Decoratifs and the Ecole de Photographie of the City of Paris from 1926-1927. During the time she worked for Harry Meerson as am assistant she met Brassai. Begins photographing and from 1931 she signes her work as Dora Maar.. She works in both advertizing and portraiture and publishes work in beauty and fashion magaazines. Dora met Andre Breton in 1935 and became involved in Surrealist activities. Paul Eluard introduced her to Picasso . The following year she became a model for Man Ray. In the 1980-1990 period, Dora creates new images by contact printing some of her earlier negatives with objects thereby creating photogram images. These included portraits surrounded with botanicals, a portraits with a feather, and an arrow,. She also created a photogram of a perfume bottle with other objects.

In the 1940s, the photogram was also combined with other techniques.

In the US, Carlotta Corpron (1901-1988) designed her images using light and paper. It all began at Texas Woman's University in Denton, Texas. She and her students had the opportunity to create photograms. Her interactions with Kepes, while he was at Denton, were pivotal in her exploring the use of light modulation from white paper surfaces to create images as well as her application of the photogram technique to create some of her most creative photograms.

Walker Evans spent most of his photographic career creating images of the Great Depression for the Farm Security Administration using large format methods, and he later created prose for Time and Fortune magazines. Evans later became involved in abstract photography and created at least one photogram "untitled" of a hand in 1929 [James Danzinger, "American Photographs 1900-2000," Assouline, Plate 34, 601 W 26th Street, NY, NY 212-983-6810].

Lotte Jacobi (1896-1990) created what she referred to as “photogenics” in the 1940s and 1950s. Nathan Lerner (1915- ) and Barbara Morgan (1900-1992) also experimented with the photogram. Barbara Morgan frequently combined light drawing and photograms in the same images. These ideas were further developed and by 1938 she created images by photographing a moving dancer holding a flashlight. [Naomi Rosenblum, A World History of Photography, 3rd edition 1997, Abbeville Press, p580]. These later images, made in-camera, however, are not photograms.

Roger Cathreineau (1925 - 1962) born in Tours, France. Roger Catherineau studied paintingand drawing at the Ecole du Louvre and Ecole des Arts Applique and later turned his interest to creating imagery unlike any of his peers. He became facinated with the imagery of the imagination rather than recording a trace of his immediate environment. He will be remembered for his uniwue and compelling photograms, at least one of which is a combinations of portraits superimposed with hands. Published photograms are mainly from the mid 70's and attempt to produce abstract images of recognizable objects. Catherineau's work has been recently published [Black and White Magazine, Volume 11, Issue 70, October 2009, pp 62-69].

In the 1950s, Herbert W. Franke ( ) (Austria) and Peter Keetman ( ) in Germany used oscilloscopes and prisms to produce geometric abstractions.

James Welling (1951 - )
Regen Projects - discussion in a recent short review [Focus Magazine, Issue 18, October 2009, pp90-91]

Tile photograms - several, 1985.

Christopher Bucklow (1957 - ) in his Guest series traced the outline of a person onto a sheet of metal foil. Within this shape he punched hundreds of holes that became the apertures of a large pinhole camera. Each hole, upon exposure to light projected a separate image of the sun onto the photographic paper. By varying the size of the holes, Bucklow creates the illusion of a three-dimensional body made up of discrete points of light. [http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/artmuseum/exhibitions/archive/hope/artistnotes.html ]

Ei Kyu (or Ei Q) (1911-1960) Japanese painter and photogrpher. Ei Kyu studied paining at the japan Art School from 1925-1927 and began photography in 1930. His photograms are some of the earliest produced in Japan. For Ei Kyu the more than just an abstract composition created with light. He wrote that the "Photogram is a synthesis of all photographic techniques... This creates a symphony. Through the photographic paper, which creates so sensitively to light, a construction that was never possible using other materials emerges, enabling thephotographer to compose an abundance of reality at will." [Photo Times, "For the Liberal production of Photograms", 1930]. [see Anne Tucker, The History of Japanese Photography, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2003.

Ei Kyu became prominent after showing his photograms to art critic Teijiro Kubo and painter Saburo Hasegawa. They organized an exhibit of his work in Tokyo in 1936 and Ei Kyu assumed the name Ei Q. At this time he produced a ten print portfolio in an edition of 40 entitled "The Reason of Sleep" which established Ei Q as a prominent avant garde artist.

Thomas Barrow, American (1938- ) was born in Kansas City, Missouri. He studied at the Art Institute of Design in Chicago, Illinois and received his M.A. in 1967. He served as the Associate Director of the University of New Mexico Art Museum from 1973-1976. Barrow started teaching photography in 1976 in the Art Department of the University of New Mexico. His midwestern academic pedigree includes studying with Aaron Siskind at the Art Institute of Design in Chicago and with film maker Jack Ellis at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. [Museum of New Mexico, Museum of Fine Arts, Idea Photographic: After Modernism - ref

He has produced a series of silver-gelatin photograms and then applied spray paint to the prints. These combine the feeling of a split-toned black and white print and at the same time appear as color-print photograms. He has produced a series of photograms entitled Disjunctive Forms. His images appear as surreal assemblages of various found and created objects superimposed with stencil text. Barrow’s photograms include Discrete Multivariate Analysis, and Disjunctive Forms, a complex photogram, a gelatin silver print with spray paint, which is part of a series titled “Spray Paint Series”

Further information can be found in:
Coleman, A. D., Light Readings, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998.

Grundberg, Andy and Gauss and McCarthy, Kathleen, Inventions and Transformations – the Photos of Thomas Barrow Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998.

The Extended Document, Rochester, New York: International Center of Photography, George Eastman House, 1975.

Sobieszek, Robert A., “Masterpieces of Photography from the George Eastman House Collections”, New York, Abbeville Press, 1985. p 411.

Adam Fuss (1961-) British, currently working in New York, is considered a contemporary master of the photogram. From 1985-2002 he produced a series of photograms having circular patterns created using a suspended moving light. Fuss has also used stained glass to produce photogram imagery. During and after about 1992 he produced a variety of colorful images of sometimes very unusual objects directly on Ilfochrome (Cibachrome) photographic color paper. Fuss has created photograms by exposing Ilfochrome using rabbit entrails, cow livers, and dead birds as subjects. Due to the fluid nature of some of his subject matter, there is a chemical reaction between the photographic paper and the animal fluids resulting in strange colorations in the final photograms. His photograms deal with the connectedness of all natural matter. He has done photograms of powder trails caused by the movement of snakes and autobiographical photograms of babies. More recently, Fuss's black and white photograms of clothing have been published in the fashion magazine section of the New York Times where the unoccupied clothing subliminally predicts the place where a body would belong. [Adam Fuss in The New York Times Style Magazine, Women's Fashion Spring 2006, pp 196-201].

Water Drops 69 x 45 3/4" (1997) photogram in [Sotheby's Photographs from the Colllection of Nancy Richardson, New York, Tuesday October 16, 2007]. Fuss has also created photograms of concentric waves, caused by a single drop of water, traversing the water. This is part of the "Ark" series.

Another cameraless imagery that attracted attention in the 1950s combined photogram techniques with a modern version of cliché-verre. [Naomi Rosenblum, A World History of Photography, 3rd edition 1997, Abbeville Press, p582].

His work is represented in some of the most prestigous galleries and museums in the world.

Anne Barnard (1958- ) Using photography in one way or another, Anne Barnard's work encompasses disintegration as a general theme which is manifest in photographs and photograms of blobs, spots, parts of the body,bodies, regular and irregular patterns and the like. Her work is in both black and white and color.
[http://www.annebarnard.com]

Marcel Bovis (1904-1997) French - produced silver gelatin photograms from about 1945 to 1950. Several appear to been made using arrangements of string or wire along with other objects.

http://www.photography-now.com/artists/K14320.html

Varvara Rodchenko ( - ) is the daughter of Aleksandr Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova. She currently resides in Moskow. Varvara utilizes photomontage and photograms in her imagery. She frequently uses multiple exposures to produce depth and texture in her photograms.

Nancy Wilson-Pajic (1941- ) American, born in Indiana, now living and working in Paris. Wilson-Pajic has created (1995-1997) a series of large cyanotype photograms on watercolor paper entitled "Falling Angels". The positioning of the human figures and other objects from nature present the feeling of free fall and evoke the feeling of helplessness we feel when we are falling. The cyanotype blue contributes to slowing down of time.

Susan Derges (b 1955- ) has used dye destruction prints to produce photograms. A dye destruction print is made using a print material that has three emulsion layers, sensitized to be affected by different primary colors of light. During exposure, the layers record selective information related to the color of light and upon processing, the dyes are selectively destroyed based on the exposure. Ilfochrome is a dye destruction medium.
[http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/photography/process.php?processed=pr018&row=5]
She has developed methods to use the night as her darkroom. She has also made photograms under the surface of water in streams and the sea at night using artificial light.

Marco Breuer ( )- Has created a variety of photograms which include the use of combustible materials such as cloth and the use of alcohol, coals and fire to modify the surface and imagery. His imagery is concerned with everyday objects and rituals. His photograms include shadows created using materials that relate to his personal inventory of daily objects. He combines an element of control in the arrangement of objects with the chance and variability that occurs upon exposure.

Eva Shaderowfsky - has created photograms of botanical objects by creating photograms on photographic silver gelatin paper and then using these paper negatives in the enlarger to produce black and white positive prints from the original photograms. http://www.webgirls.com/eva/photograms.html
See also, http:// www.sherryart.com/paintings/eva.html

Seze Devres, of Turkish descent (19 - ), has produced experimental color photograms on film using contemporary basic materials found in the darkroom. Her images contain a sense of depth, absent in many other photograms, and this layering of shadows and hues provides a unique imagery. [http://www.seze.net].

Barnabas Strickland ( - ) produced a 70” x 130” photogram that is made up of 54 11x14 gelatin silver photogram prints sewn together on a piece of canvas. The work is a photogram of a flag given by the United States when his father, a WWII veteran, was buried. http://home.earthlink.net/~theconceptco/flag.html

Linda McCartney produced a photogram cyanotype entitled “Boy Shape I” (p69) which includes the silhouette of a boy and a hand in the space of the head. This is the only photogram included in this book of her photographs. [Linda McCartney, Sun Prints, Bulfinch Press, Little, Brown and Company, 2000]

Michael Spano (1949- ) born in New York City, has produced a variety of very large photograms, including photograms that include photographic images. His photograms include abstraction and full length silhouette photograms of his wife. Spano has also created photograms by exposing parts of newspaper pages onto sheets of film. His final prints are toned and assembled into larger photo assemblies.

Henry Holmes Smith, (1909-1986) was an early American experimentalist… [Naomi Rosenblum, A World History of Photography, 3rd edition 1997, Abbeville Press, p582]. Smith, lived in Indiana and Illinois, experimented with photomontages that included the use of overlapping camera made negatives and sometimes also added colors, one color at a time to enhance the layering. His untitled abstraction, 1946 is an example of this technique. Although formally a contact sheet of a group of negatives, the fact that they were overlapped and added to is in my opinion a photogram, because it was created in the spirit of using light to create a transformed image, rather than merely being a trace of the original camera made imagery. In the mid 1990s he also created a series of photograms using karo syrup.

Martha Madigan ( - ) , a Wisconsin artist, uses a combination of the human element (children) and other organic materials (such as leaves) in photograms that combine outlines of bodies with the textures of the translucent materials. Madigan has produced cyanotypes in a "Tree Series" whereby she supported large sheets of cyanotype paper in a tree for thirty minutes from 12:00 to 12:30 on each sunny day for a year. The images have captured the random motion of the leaves and branches as they moved due to the wind during the long exposures. The collective shadows remind one of the motion in the natural world that we miss due to our daily rush through our environments. Madigan has also produced photogram images on gold-toned printing-out-paper (Aestas, Goddess of Summer, 2000).

Théodore Brauner (1914-2005) lived in Paris and worked as a commercial photographer and photojournalist. Brauner, over a period of many years, produced a series of photograms which he referred to as "Solarfixes." He produced his earliest photograms in 1934 and over his lifetime he developed his vision and techniques. Only three years earlier he had joined the Surrealist group Alge in Bucharest. He left Romania in 1942 and entered Israel in 1944. His reference to solar in his photograms is appropriate, in that he, like H. Fox Talbot, exposed his photograms using sunlight - they are in-fact photogenic drawings. An excellent review of some of his later work has appeared [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F06E7D71F3DF936A35753C1A9679C8B63]. His conceptualization of the use of light and his application of specific and non-realistic imagery predates many of those who in the last two or three decades have gained notoriety for producing photograms. His work is non-representational and is unique in both the tonal values and the abstract shapes he created in his Solarfixes. The images are more like chemigrams than photograms in nature.

Kunie Sugiura (1942 - ) is a New York based artist, born in Nagoya, Japan, who over a period of twelve years produced a book of photograms of live objects by placing these objects on photographic paper and exposing the compositions. This book, Kunie Sugiura: Dark Matters/Light Affairs, is a work of art. The shadows of these biological specimens are quite different from the cyanotypes of British plant-life produced by Anna Atkins at the beginning of photographic history. Sugiura's silver-gelatin photograms are enhanced by her use of chemicals to impart color to the images. Her photograms are large and many are tranquil and quiet in nature. [Bill Arning and Joel Smith, Kunie Sugiura: Dark Matters/Light Affairs", Pamela Auchincloss Gallery, ISBN 0295980389].

Kunie Sugiura has very creatively made photograms of moving creatures including a series of images, “The Kitten Papers” in which two kittens were allowed to move, walk and sleep on silver-gelatin photographic paper. In these images Sugiura combined the elements of time, chance and photojournalism. In other works, she has captured the motion of frogs, squid and octopi in more arranged but still not planned movement over time.

Sugiura, often uses the negative photogram image as a paper negative to create a positive image print, whereby the subject becomes a black silhouette.

Another theme is her use of flowers, both intact and arranged or sometimes strung on wires to create unnatural but interesting arrangements.
[http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1248/is_4_90/ai_84669345]

Joan Foncuberta (1955 - ) is a prolific photographer born in Barcelona. He studied communications at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona from 1972-77 and received his masters degree in 1977 also at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona. His work is discussed or can be seen as follows:
http://www.fontcuberta.com
http://www.zonezero.com/exposiciones/fotografos/fontcuberta2/
http://www.iua.upf.es/~~gvirtual/topofoni/topof_c.htmhttp://www.zonezero.com/exposiciones/fotografos/fontcuberta/

Harry Nankin (
www.luminous-lint.com
www.diannetanzergallery.net.au
www.theage.com.au/articles/2004
www.artfacts.net/index
www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/sunmorn/stories
www.acadarts.utas.edu.au
www.monash.vic.gov.au
www.mildura.vic.gov.au

Susan Purdy (
www.susanpurdy.net

Penelope Davis ( - ) a native of Australia, uses the photogram to produce images of Japanese tissue packets embedded in resin. These images appear as abstract colorful rectangles reminescent of books on a table or shelf against a black space. These fabricated objects thus represent other real objects in our repretoire of expectations. She has exhibited her photography extensively in Australia.
www.artbank.gov.au/images/artworks/davisL.jpg

Anna Ferran ( - ), Australian photographer and sculptor, has created photograms of period clothing from museum collections. Her images are both delicate because of the type of clothing that she images and ghostly because of the whites that glow as part of the photogram images. She describes her interest in clothing "because there is that very strong association with human presence and absence" [http://www.abc.net.au/arts/visual/stories/s586494.htm].
www.hht.net.au

Christina Henri ( - ), lives in Tasmania and began her journey into the artistic documentation of female convict history after a visit to the Female Factory Historic site in Hobart, Tasmania in 1999. She became the honorary artist-in-residence at the site now known as the Cascades Female Factory and began to experiment with various techniques to "tell" the women's stories. At another site, Narryna, she saw boxes and boxes of christening bonnets and other clothes that had belonged to the women and their babies. She has experimented with silk-screened, printed and photogram images and has produced some very haunting images of these objects by way of the photogram's ability to reveal the layering of material objects. Her photograms celebrate the clothing and the lives of the women and children who wore these clothes. The fabric revealed in the photograms mirror the fabric of the lives of the wearers.

"Flying High"

"Dancing to Lif'e's Waltz"

Sigridur Bachmann ( - ) is from Iceland and creates color photograms of flora and other more fluid objects. She began to work in photography at Studio Gudmundar at the early age of fourteen. Later she earned her masters certificate also in photography. She specialized in portrait photography while working at the Svipmyndir studio and in 1988 she opened her own studio. More recently she has concentrated on the photogram.

Stephanie Valentin (
www.stillsgallery.com.au

Simone Douglass (
www.artereal.com.au

Fernanda Gavito, an artist from London, UK, has produced a series of photograms that include the use of repetitive human figures to imply motion. These haunting images present both aspects of reality and the sense of dreaming.
http://portfoliofernanda.blogspot.com/2006/09/photograms.html

Martha Casanave, ( ) has created a variety of cyanotype photograms of natural flora in a manner more experimental that Anna Atkins. The borders of the cyanotypes are irregularly curved, fitting the curved foliage and branches of the flora depicted. [http://Martha.casanave.com/cyanotypes] She has also created a series of photogram images of letters of the Hebrew Alphabet. These images are hauntingly beautiful, cool in that they are black and white and yet spiritually mystical and warm at the same time.

Eliabeth Graves, , has produced a variety of representational cyanotype photograms, many of common utilitarian objects from the shop or kitchen [http://www.aegraves.com/photograms]

David Fried, (1962- ) American, born in NYC, currently working in Germany, using the interface between air and water in the form of bubbles has created a variety of photograms on color sheet film. In other photograms, Fried has captured the images of water droplets directly on large format color film. The images appear at first to be photographs of distant lights, bringing a cosmic holistic feeling to the images.
[http://www.davidfried.com/text_photography_pg1.html]

Angela Easterling, ( - ), creates photograms of plants. Using a similar approach to that of Anna Atkins, the photograms of Easterling document threatened and endemic plant life of the British Virgin Islands. [www.angela-easterling.co.uk]

Iwata Nakayama (1895-1949) was a Japanese photographer, born in Yanagawa in the Fukuoka prefecture. Nakayama was educated at Tokyo University of Fine Arts and graduated in 1918. He lived in New York and Paris and was influenced by the avant-garde artists and photographers of the time. He was influenced by Italian Futurists and by Tsuguji Fujita. He was involved in the founding of the Ashiya Camera Club in Ashiya. Nakayama and other amateur photographers such as Kichinosuka Bentani and Seiji Korai produced a variety of images using photogram techniques and photomontage.
[http://www.ashiya-web.or.jp/museum/10us/103education/nyumon_us/nyumon_us.html]

Susan Seubert ( - ) photographs for a variety of travel and news publications but in her personal work has explored the photogram. One of her recent projects has been the making of photograms using the dry plate tintype process, also referred to as ferrotypes. Her images are both beautiful and haunting because of the combination of the relatively dark images combined with the unpredictably uneven coating texture inherent in the dry plate tintype process. Some of her images of dresses and gloves appear to be floating above a lunar landscape or as if the object had been photographed in motion using a panning technique to cause the background to blur while maintaining a sharp foreground image. [Susan Seubert, "Memento Mori: The Camera-less Tintype" in Camera Arts, December 2005/January 2006, pp18-23.]

Les Rudnick (1947- ) has explored the reflection and refraction of light through glass to form surreal patterns in photograms. He has created photograms that cause the viewer to realize patterns and shapes by creating a "point-of-view" not normally visible to the casual viewer. He creates photograms that are both representational and abstract from individual objects and from groupings or collections of found objects. Recent works include color photograms produced from natural materials representing transitions and the flow of natural energy. http://www.photograms.org

Michael Flomen (1952- ) born in Montreal, a master printer, printed the exhibition of Jacques-Henri Lartique in the U. S. in 1975. His recent photograms are creations from a combination of physical elements with other objects. He produces images we can't see, e.g. the motion of a firefly at night. His photograms are reminescent of those of Susan Derges who also works in large scale.

Timeline:
The practitioners of photogram art during each recent decade are as follows:

Barbara Morgan (1900-1992)

1940-50s
Nancy Wilson-Pajic - large cyanotype images, "Fallen Angels"

Frederick Summer (1905-1999), born in Angri, Italy. Summer was a multi-talented artist having created unique work in music, art, architecture as well as photography. He is well know for his surrealist collages and cameraless abstract images.

Robert Heineken (1931-2006), lived in Chicago, Illinois. Some of his photograms were created by using the image information from both sides of a single magazine page . These multi-image photograms superimposed both the visual/pictorial information and the text that appeared on either of the two sides of the magazine page. Heinecken was a perceptual genius in his ability to continually find unique pages which when printed through produced meaningful commentary on many contemporary subjects.

1950-60s
Anton Stankowski

1960-70s

1970-80s

1980-90s
Thomas Barrow, American (1938- ) Barrow was born in Kansas City, Missouri. He has produced a series of silver-gelatin photograms and then applied spray paint to the prints. These combine the feeling of a split-toned black and white print and at the same time appear as color-print photograms. He has produced a series of photograms entitled Disjunctive Forms. His images appear as surreal assemblages of various found and created objects superimposed with stencil text.

Iwata Nakayama (1895-1949)

Anne Barnard (1958- ) [http://www.annebarnard.com]

Marcel Bovis (1904-1997) French - produced silver gelatin photograms from about 1945 to 1950. Several appear to been made using arrangements of string or wire along with other objects.

Susan Derges (b 1955- ) has used dye destruction prints to produce photograms.
[http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/photography/process.php?processed=pr018&row=5]
She has also made photograms under the surface of water in streams and the sea at night using artificial light.

1990-2000
Marco Breuer ( )- Has created a variety of photograms which include the use of combustible materials such as cloth and the use of alcohol, coals and fire to modify the surface and imagery. His imagery is concerned with everyday objects and rituals. His photograms include shadows created using materials that relate to his personal inventory of daily objects. He combines an element of control in the arrangement of objects with the chance and variability that occurs upon exposure.

Eva Shaderowfsky - has created photograms of botanical objects by creating photograms on photographic silver gelatin paper and then using these paper negatives in the enlarger to produce black and white positive prints from the original photograms. http://www.webgirls.com/eva/photograms.html See also, http:// www.sherryart.com/paintings/eva.html

Michael Spano (1949- ) born in New York City, has produced a variety of very large photograms, including photograms that include photographic images. Spano has also created photograms by exposing parts of newspaper pages onto sheets of film. His final prints are toned and assembled into larger photo assemblies.

Adam Fuss, British, (1961- ) has created a large body of innovative photograms using silver-gelatin and Ilfochrome® photo materials. http://www.booktease.com/arenaeditions/adamfuss/layouts.html
http://www.blindspot.com/issue1/fuss.html

Anita Douthat ( - ) , a Kentucky photographer, has been creating photograms for two decades and has used a variety of objects made by man (tools, stools, a sled, a table). She has also done a series entitled "Bone Scans: Body Double" in which glass bones, made by glass sculptors Jonathan Christie and Joel Otterson, are used to create an almost human-like faux-X-rayogram. She utilizes the photogram process because of it's simplicity and the opportunity for image creation that is not possible with the camera and lens. She incorporates objects of normal size relative to the overall image and also smaller models of objects where it would be impossible to use the full size object. Her images include gold-toned silver-gelatin prints ( some on print-out paper) and images ranging from cold to warm tones. She has also created photograms on print-out-paper that she translated by toning with gold to produce a beautiful warm tone, very sensual image (Shapes of Sound, 1998).

Kunie Sugiura ( - ) is a New York based artist who has produced toned black and white silver-gelatin photograms using biological specimens. She is the author of Kunie Sugiura: Dark Matters/Light Matters.

2000-date
Susan Seubert ( - ) photographs for a variety of travel and news publications but in her personal work has explored the photogram. One of her recent projects has been the making of photograms using the dry plate tintype process, also referred to as ferrotypes. Her images are both beautiful and haunting because of the combination of the relatively dark images combined with the unpredictably uneven coating texture inherent in the dry plate tintype process. Some of her images of dresses and gloves appear to be floating above a lunar landscape or as if the object had been photographed in motion using a panning technique to cause the background to blur while maintaining a sharp foreground image. [Susan Seubert, "Memento Mori: The Camera-less Tintype" in Camera Arts, December 2005/January 2006, pp18-23.]