Anita Doutha,, Pryo Girl, photogram on 

gold-toned printing-out paper, 1998
  

 
Photograms

Photograms are produced without a camera by placing an assemblage of objects onto photosensitive paper. The latent image is then developed, producing a shadow-like photographic image. While they may seem limited, photograms have the ability to produce a more immediate and accurate image than a camera with a lens because the exact size and shape of the object is imprinted. The first photograms which preceded the invention of photography, signaled an interest in making sun prints directly from nature. During this period, the photogram was understood as a scientific record of nature, rather than as a medium of artistic expression.

The artistic potential of the photogram was first exploited later during the 1920s by such artists as Swiss photographer Christian Schad, who was a member of the Dada movement in Geneva. The Surrealist Man Ray and Constructivist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy used this technique extensively in the early Modernist period. Like Man Ray and Moholy-Nagy, Douthat is attracted to the photogram, in part, because it allows chance to dictate the outcome of the image.

--Nan Sagooleim

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