Schadographs are some of the first intentionally abstract images. Schad used the cameraless photo technique, covering the surface of light sensitive paper with various objects and leaving it to develop on his windowsill. Christian preferred using scraps of paper or fabrics, often looking on the street or in bins. He then often cut a jagged border around the schadographs to "free them from the convention of a square"
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A Photogram is an image made on photographic paper without aid of a camera. To make the image below Man Ray exposed the image at least 3 times, each time using different objects to act as a stencil. These different objects included a pair of hands, two people kissing and two darkroom trays.
“It is impossible to say which planes of the picture are to be interpreted as existing closer or deeper in space. The picture is a visual invention: an image without a real-life model to which we can compare it,” curator John Szarkowski noted. Man Ray claims to have invented the photogram calling it the Rayogram, however the practice had been used since the earliest days of photography. |
The image on the left was also created without a camera and was made placing objects onto photographic paper and exposing it to light. Whist this process had also been practiced dating back to the 19th Century it was then revived in the 20th century to to explore the optical and expressive properties of light.This artist however normally took the process a step further photographing the photogram itself as a negative. The soft edges of the shapes are from the grain of the paper in which the light has passed through.
The left image of the hand and paintbrush was described by the artist ambitiously that it is "the most vital medium of artistic expression in the modern age" |