Almost everybody gets in touch with the photogram for the first time during a check-up with his doctor, since an x-ray is essentially a photogram. It is a fixed shadow of a three-dimensional object on a light-sensitive material.
Conceptually there is a controversy as to whether the photogram is merely an experimental camera-less branch of photography, or if it constitutes its own medium. The front lines in this debate recently became obvious at a symposium at the Centre for Art and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, which for the first time was devoted explicitly to the photogram (more…). Part of the scope of www.photogram.org is to strengthen the medial independency of the photogram as shadow picture.
The result differs greatly from a photographic image made with a camera. Everybody knows the strange feeling watching for the first time his own body as photogram on an x-ray.
The photogram technique is at least as old as the existence of photosensitive surfaces. The real breakthrough for the photogram constitutes the discovery of x-rays by Conrad Röntgen. In the arts, the photogram was explored rather late, after the first World War. The name “photogram” was introduced and established by László Moholy-Nagy in 1925. With respect to Christian Schad and Man Ray who used the technique before Moholy-Nagy, sometimes the technique is also called “schadography” or “rayograph”.
Making photograms at home is extremely simple. One can easily create his own photogram by placing an object on a photo-sensitive surface (like photo paper) inside a dark room. The paper is then briefly exposed to light and later developed.
|
Bertha Röntgen's hand with a ring, produced on Friday, November 8, 1895
|
