Photograms are made using a technique in which an image is made without a camera by layering objects on top of photographic paper and exposing the paper.
Man Ray
Man Ray was an American-born visual artist, however, he spent most of his career in Paris.
Man Ray was a pioneer of camera-less photography. He was a American-born ‘visual artist’ who lived the majority of his life in Paris. He is credited as being the inventor of the photography technique ‘Photograms’ (although initially he dubbed them ‘Rayographs’) and therefore the first notable artist to use the method.
His work is very simple and features various items (including body parts) placed onto photographic paper and then exposed.
As a result of their simplicity, these images don’t have any particular hidden meaning and they are inherently realistic.
The items are arranged in a random order on the page and are monochromatic (this is because the photo-sensitive paper he used was for black & white photography). This creates a great contrast which allows you to see clearly the different objects. However, in some of his images he experimented with moving the objects and holding them at different distances from the paper which created an interesting image as the objects were blurred in various different ways.
