Photograms are a type of alternative photography invented by William Henry Fox Talbot. However there has been some contention between who invented it as Man Ray claimed the invention as his own and named them Rayographs. He invented the process when he was struggling to sketch scenery in Venice so he decided he would make something that does sketches for him. The photogram artists I'm going to be talking about today are Man Ray and László Moholy-Nagy.
Man Ray's "Rayographs":
Man Ray's "Rayographs":
László Moholy-Nagy's Photograms
You can see clearly that Man Ray's "Rayographs"are a lot more complicated compared to László Moholy-Nagy's work. Ray uses a lot of everyday miscellaneous objects and László Moholy-Nagy uses a minimal amount of simplistic items including his hand. Personally I would say that I prefer Man Ray's photograms to László Moholy-Nagy's but I must admit I love the one of the wine glass mostly because it looks as if it is falling and it is about to shatter and I think it looks quite peaceful and very aesthetically pleasing.
My Photograms
These are my first photograms, personally I think they are alright for my first attempt. My favourite thing about them is the wire mesh as you can see such small pieces of wire in such clear definition, the smudge in the hand one wasn't on purpose but I think it adds to it as I don't think it would look as good if it was too perfect. I found that creating photograms seemed to be a lot easier than pinhole photography to me as I found it a lot easier to get an exposure even though the background isn't quite as dark as I wanted it to be. There are a lot more of my photograms on my abstraction page.
Overall I think this was a good topic and I would definitely do more photograms and I would make sure I would improve on the things that I don't like as much on this try.