Editing Photogram (section)

==History==
[[File:Anna Atkins grass cyanotype.jpg|thumb|upright|One of [[Anna Atkins]]'s [[cyanotype]] photograms of Festuca grasses]]

===Prehistory===
The phenomenon of the shadow has long aroused human curiosity and inspired artistic representation, as recorded by [[Pliny the Elder]],<ref>Pliny the Elder, ''Natural History'', xxxv, 14</ref> and various forms of [[shadow play]] since the 1st millennium BCE.<ref name=chen25>Fan Pen Chen (2003), [https://www.jstor.org/stable/1179080 Shadow Theaters of the World], Asian Folklore Studies, Vol. 62, No. 1 (2003), pp. 25-64</ref><ref name=orr69>{{cite journal | last=Orr | first=Inge C. | title=Puppet Theatre in Asia | journal=Asian Folklore Studies | publisher=Nanzan University | volume=33 | issue=1 | year=1974 | doi=10.2307/1177504 | pages=69–84| jstor=1177504 }}</ref> The photogram, in essence, is a means by which the fall of light and shade on a surface may be automatically captured and preserved.<ref>{{Citation | author1=Stoichiță, Victor Ieronim | title=A short history of the shadow | date=August 1997 | publication-date=1997 | publisher=Reaktion Books | isbn=978-1-86189-000-9 | url=https://archive.org/details/shorthistoryofsh0000unse }}</ref><ref name=":1">{{Citation | author1=Barnes, Martin | author2=Neusüss, Floris Michael | author3=Cordier, Pierre | author4=Derges, Susan | author5=Fabian Miller, Garry | author6=Fuss, Adam | title=Shadow catchers : camera-less photography | year=2012 | publication-date=2012 |location=London, New York |publisher=Merrell / Victoria and Albert Museum | edition= Rev. and expanded | isbn=978-1-85894-592-7 }}</ref> To do so required a substance that would react to light. From the 17th century, [[Photochemistry|photochemical]] reactions were progressively observed or discovered in salts of silver, iron, uranium and chromium. In 1725, [[Johann Heinrich Schulze]] was the first to demonstrate a temporary photographic effect in [[Silver halide|silver salts]], confirmed by [[Carl Wilhelm Scheele|Carl Wilhhelm Scheele]] in 1777,<ref>{{Cite book|last=Eder|first=Josef Maria|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/4005270|title=History of photography|publisher=Dover|year=1972|isbn=0-486-23586-6|edition=3rd|location=New York|pages=57–83|oclc=4005270}}</ref> who found that violet light caused the greatest reaction in [[silver chloride]]. [[Humphry Davy]] and [[Thomas Wedgwood (photographer)|Thomas Wedgewood]] reported<ref>Sir Humphry Davy (1802) 'An Account of a Method of Copying Paintings Upon Glass and of Making Profiles by the Agency of Light upon Nitrate of Silver, invented by T. Wedgwood Esq. In ''Journal of the Royal Institution''</ref> that they had produced temporary images from placing stencils/light sources on photo-sensitized materials, but had no means of fixing (making permanent) the images.<ref>{{Citation | author1=Hannavy, John | title=Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography | publication-date=2005 | publisher=Taylor & Francis Ltd. | isbn=978-0-203-94178-2 }}</ref>

[[File:VanDyke-feather.jpg|thumb|upright|Photogram of a feather by [[Van Dyke brown (printing)|Van Dyke brown print]] copying technique.]]
===Nineteenth century===
{{Expand section|The 19th century was when photographic processes (with cameras) became more widely accessible/standardized items began to be produced to create photographs (and presumably photograms.)|date=February 2023}}

The first photographic [[Negative (photography)|negatives]] made were photograms (though the first permanent photograph was made with a camera by [[Nicéphore Niépce]]). [[William Henry Fox Talbot]] called these ''photogenic drawings'', which he made by placing leaves or pieces of lace onto sensitized paper, then left them outdoors on a sunny day to expose. This produced a dark background with a white silhouette of the placed object.<ref>{{cite book |url=http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/month/Feb2007.html |title=The Pencil of Nature |first=William Henry Fox |last=Talbot |year=1844 |location=London |publisher=Special Collections Department, Library, University of Glasgow |access-date=21 November 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110611071313/https://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/month/Feb2007.html |archive-date=11 June 2011 |url-status=live }}</ref>

In 1843, Anna Atkins produced a book titled ''British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions'' in installments; the first to be illustrated with photographs. The images were all photograms of botanical specimens, mostly seaweeds, which she made using [[Sir John Herschel]]'s [[cyanotype]] process, which yields blue images.<ref>{{Citation | author1=Schaaf, Larry J. | author2=Atkins, Anna |editor=Chuang, Joshua | title=Sun gardens : cyanotypes by Anna Atkins |date=2018 | publisher=The New York Public Library | isbn=978-3-7913-5798-0 }}</ref>

[[File:-Photogram; Laboratory Equipment- MET DP106486.jpg|thumb|upright|Gelatin silver print photogram by [[Jaromír Funke]] (1926; modernism)]]
===Modernism===
Photograms and artists who worked with(in)the medium have participated in/contributed to several studied/demarcated [[Modernism|modern art movements]], such as [[Dada]]<ref>{{Citation | author1=Dickerman, Leah | author2=Affron, Matthew |title=Inventing Abstraction, 1910-1925 : how a radical idea changed modern art |date=2012 |publisher=Museum of Modern Art |isbn=978-0-87070-828-2 }}</ref><ref name=":4">{{Citation | author1=Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.) | author2=Umland, Anne | author3=Sudhalter, Adrian | author4=Gerson, Scott | title=Dada in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art | year=2008 | publication-date=2008 | publisher=Museum of Modern Art | isbn=978-0-87070-668-4 }}</ref><ref>{{Citation | author1=Elder, Bruce (R. Bruce) | title=Dada, surrealism, & the cinematic effect | date=May 2013 | publication-date=2012 | publisher=Wilfrid Laurier University Press |location=Lancaster | isbn=978-1-55458-625-7 }}</ref> and [[Constructivism (art)|Constructivism]],<ref>{{Citation | author1=Tóth, Edit | title=Design and Visual Culture from the Bauhaus to Contemporary Art : Optical Deconstructions | publication-date=2018 | publisher=Routledge | edition= 1st | isbn=978-1-351-06245-9 }}</ref><ref>{{Citation | author1=Hirsch, Robert | title=Seizing the light : a social & aesthetic history of photography | year=2017 | publication-date=2017 | publisher=Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group | edition= Third | isbn=978-1-138-94425-1 }}</ref> and in architecture in the formalist dissections of the Bauhaus.<ref>{{Citation | author1=Bergdoll, Barry | author2=Dickerman, Leah |title=Bauhaus 1919-1933 : workshops for modernity |date=2009 |publisher=Museum of Modern Art |location=London |isbn=978-0-87070-758-2}}</ref><ref>{{Citation | author1=Bauhaus | title=Bauhaus photography | year=1985 | publication-date=1985 | publisher=Cambridge, Mass MIT Press | isbn=978-0-262-13202-2 | url=https://archive.org/details/bauhausphotograp00bauh }}</ref>

The relative ease of access (not needing a camera and, depending on the medium, a [[darkroom]]) and perhaps the interactive to the point of feeling incidental<ref>and therefore, automatized or mechanical - see [[Dada]]</ref> nature of creating photograms<ref>imagine, you could be a photographer or hobbyist who leaves something accidentally on film/photosensitive paper in a bright room</ref> enabled experiments in abstraction by Christian Schad as early as 1918,<ref>{{Citation | author1=Neusüss, Floris Michael | author2=Barrow, Thomas F | author3=Hagen, Charles | title=Experimental vision : the evolution of the photogram since 1919 | year=1994 | publication-date=1994 | publisher=Roberts Rinehart Publishers in association with the Denver Art Museum | isbn=978-1-879373-73-0 }}</ref> Man Ray in 1921, and Moholy-Nagy in 1922,<ref>{{Citation | author1=Moholy-Nagy, Làszlò |editor=Witkovsky, Matthew S. |editor2=Eliel, Carol S. |editor3=Vail, Karole P. B. |author2=Pénichon, Sylvie |title=Moholy-Nagy : future present |date=2016 |publisher=Art Institute of Chicago |edition=First |isbn=978-0-86559-281-0}}</ref> through dematerialisation and distortion, merging and interpenetration of forms, and flattening of perspective.

===Christian Schad's 'schadographs'===
In 1918, Christian Schad's experiments with the photogram were inspired by Dada, creating photograms from random arrangements of discarded objects he had collected such as torn tickets, receipts and rags. Some argue that he was the first to make this an art form, preceding Man Ray and László Moholy-Nagy by at least a year or two,<ref name=":2">{{Citation | author1=Rosenblum, Naomi | title=A world history of photography | year=1984 | publication-date=1984 | publisher=Abbeville Press | edition= 1st | isbn=978-0-89659-438-8 }}</ref> and one was published in March 1920 in the magazine ''[[Dadaphone]]''<ref>Hage, E. (2011). The Magazine as Strategy: Tristan Tzara's Dada and the Seminal Role of Dada Art Journals in the Dada Movement. The Journal of Modern Periodical Studies 2(1), 33-53. Penn State University Press</ref> by [[Tristan Tzara]], who dubbed them 'Schadographs'.<ref name=":0" />

===Man Ray's 'rayographs'===
[[File:Man Ray, 1922, Untitled Rayograph.jpg|thumb|right|upright|Man Ray, 1922, Untitled Rayograph, gelatin silver photogram, 23.5 x 17.8 cm]]
Photograms were used in the 20th century by a number of photographers, particularly Man Ray, whose "rayographs" were also given the name by Dada leader Tzara.<ref name=":0" /> Ray described his (re-)discovery of the process in his 1963 autobiography;<ref>{{Citation | author1=Man Ray | title=Self Portrait | publication-date=1963 | publisher=Boston Little, Brown | edition=1st | url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/9124937}}</ref>

{{blockquote|"Again at night I developed the last plates I had exposed; the following night I set to work printing them. Besides the trays and chemical solutions in bottles, a glass graduate and thermometer, a box of photographic paper, my laboratory equipment was nil. Fortunately, I had to make only contact prints from the plates. I simply laid a glass negative on a sheet of light-sensitive paper on the table, by the light of my little red lantern, turned on the bulb that hung from the ceiling, for a few seconds, and developed the prints. It was while making these prints that I hit on my Rayograph process, or cameraless photographs. One sheet of photo paper got into the developing tray - a sheet unexposed that had been mixed with those already exposed under the negatives - I made my several exposures first, developing them together later - and as I waited in vain a couple of minutes for an image to appear, regretting the waste paper, I mechanically placed a small glass funnel, the graduate and the thermometer in the tray on the wetted paper, I turned on the light: before my eyes an image began to form, not quite a simple silhouette of the objects as in a straight photograph, but distorted and refracted by the glass more or less in contact with the paper and standing out against a black background, the part directly exposed to the light. I remembered when I was a boy placing fern leaves in a printing frame with proof paper, exposing it to sunlight, and obtaining a white negative of the leaves. This was the same idea, but with an added three-dimensional quality and tonal gradation."}}

[[File:ReturnToReasonRayographs.webm|thumb|thumbtime=3|Rayographs in an excerpt of ''[[Return to Reason]]'' (1923)]]
In his photograms, Man Ray made combinations of objects—a comb, a spiral of cut paper, an architect's [[French curve]]—some recognisable, others transformed, typifying Dada's rejection of 'style', emphasising chance and abstraction.<ref name=":4" /> He published a selection of these rayographs as ''Champs délicieux'' in December 1922, with an introduction by Tzara. His 1923 film ''[[Le Retour à la Raison]]'' ('Return to Reason') adapts rayograph technique to moving images.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.moma.org/artists/3716|title=Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky) {{!}} MoMA|website=The Museum of Modern Art|language=en|access-date=2019-07-05}}</ref>

===Other 20th century artists===
In the 1930s, artists including [[Theodore Roszak (artist)|Theodore Roszak]], and [[Piet Zwart]] also made photograms. [[Luigi Veronesi]] combined the photographic image with oil on canvas in large-scale colour images by preparing a light-sensitive canvas on which he placed objects in the dark for exposure and then fixing.<ref>{{Citation | title=XLII esposizione internazionale d'arte la biennale di Venezia : arte e scienza | publication-date=1986 | publisher=La Biennale di Venezia | isbn=978-88-208-0331-5 }}</ref> The shapes became the matrix for an abstract painting to which he applied colour and added drawn geometric lines to enhance the dynamics, exhibiting them at the Galerie L'Equipe in Paris in 1938–1939.<ref>{{Citation | author1=Sperone, Gian Enzo | author2=Pelizzari, Maria Antonella | author3=Robilant + Voena | title=Painting in Italy, 1910s-1950s : futurism, abstraction, concrete art | publication-date=2016 | page=148 | publisher=Robilant + Voena | url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/235380105}}</ref><ref>{{Citation | author1=Miracco, Renato | author2=Estorick Collection | author3=Italian Cultural Institute (London, England) | title=Italian abstraction : 1910-1960 | year=2006 | publication-date=2006 | publisher=Mazzotta | isbn=978-88-202-1811-9 }}</ref> Bronislaw Schlabs, Julien Coulommier, [[Andrzej Pawłowski|Andrzej Pawlowski]] and Beksinki were photogram artists in the 1940s and 1950s; [[Heinz Hajek-Halke]] and [[Kurt Wendlandt]] with their light graphics in the 1960s; Lina Kolarova, Rene Mächler, [[Dennis Oppenheim]], and Andreas Mulas in the 1970s; and [https://www.atomyc.com/ Tomy Ceballos], Kare Magnole, [[Andreas Müller-Pohle]], and [[Floris Michael Neusüss|Floris M. Neusüss]] in the 1980s.<ref name=":0">{{Citation | author1=Warren, Lynne | author2=Warren, Lynn | title=Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Photography, 3-Volume Set | date=15 November 2005 | publication-date=2005 | publisher=Taylor and Francis | isbn=978-0-203-94338-0 }}</ref>

[[File:Color X-ray photogram.jpg|thumb|upright|Modern color [[x-ray]] photogram of a wine scene ]]
===Contemporary===
Established contemporary artists who are widely known for using photograms are [[Adam Fuss]],<ref>{{Citation | author1=Fuss, Adam | author2=Tannenbaum, Barbara | author3=Akron Art Museum | author4=National Gallery of Victoria | title=Adam Fuss : photograms | publication-date=1992 | publisher=Akron Art Museum | url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/34249428}}</ref> [[Susan Derges]], [[Christian Marclay]], and Karen Amy Finkel Fishof,<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomteicholz/2021/10/19/edward-goldmans-own-made-in-la--pandemic-version/?sh=63812bde9858 |title=Edward Goldman's Own 'Made In LA'— Pandemic Version Forbes |work=Forbes}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://openeyelemagazine.fr/karen-amy-finkel-fishof-photogrammeuse/ |title=karen Amy Finkel Fishof – Photogrammeuse |date=10 April 2021 |publisher=OpenEye Magazine}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://artillerymag.com/events/radiate-recent-artworks-by-karen-amy-finkel-fishof/|title=Radiate – Recent Artworks by Karen Amy Finkel Fishof|publisher=Artillery Magazine}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.artweek.com/events/united-states/art-exhibition/santa-monica/solo-exhibition-karen-amy-finkel-fishof-radiate|title=Solo Exhibition - Karen Amy Finkel Fishof - "Radiate" |date=12 September 2019 |publisher=Artweek Magazine}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.carpazine.com/karen-amy-finkel-fishof-.html |title=Karen Amy Finkel Fishof |publisher=Carpazine Magazine}}</ref> who has digitized and minted her photograms as [[Non-fungible token|NFTs]]. Younger artists worldwide<ref>{{Citation | author1=National Gallery of Victoria | author2=Crombie, Isobel | author3=Waite, Dianne | title=Firstimpressions : contemporary Australian photograms | publication-date=2003 | publisher=Council of Trustees of the National Gallery of Victoria | url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/28774994}}</ref> continue to value the materiality of the technique in the digital age.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.valokuvataiteenmuseo.fi/en/exhibitions/abstract-100-years-abstract-photography-1917-2017|title=Abstract! 100 Years of Abstract Photography, 1917–2017|date=2017-04-27|website=Suomen valokuvataiteen museo|language=en|access-date=2019-07-03}}</ref> Mauritian artist [[Audrey Albert]] uses cameraless techniques to connect material culture to contemporary identities of [[Chagossians|Chagos Islanders]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Audrey Albert – Manchester School of Art Degree Show 2018 |url=http://degreeshow.mmu.ac.uk/2018/AudreyAlbert/ |access-date=2022-05-03 |website=Manchester School of Art |language=en}}</ref><ref name=":02">{{Cite web |last=House |first=Manchester International Festival Blackfriars |title=MIF21 Creative Fellowships |url=https://mif.co.uk/get-involved/creative-development/mif-creative-fellowships/ |access-date=2022-05-03 |website=Manchester International Festival |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=2020-04-09 |title=Audrey Albert: Future Fire 2020 |url=https://contactmcr.com/news/audrey-albert-future-fire-2020/ |access-date=2022-05-03 |website=Contact |language=en-GB}}</ref>