Rayograph / Photogram refers to a camera-less technique made by placing objects directly onto photographic paper.
Cameraless photographs made by placing objects directly on photographic paper and exposing them to light. In the context of Dada and Surrealism, understood as turning the contact of things and light itself into an image.
The photogram shows that photography is not only a matter of the camera but of light and contact — that the trace of an object on sensitized paper is a photograph without the mediation of lens, viewfinder, or conventional composition.
Rayograph / Photogram refers to a camera-less technique made by placing objects directly onto photographic paper.*1
On this site, photographers connected to Rayograph / Photogram appear mainly in 1910–1920s, often overlapping with Dada, Surrealism, Bauhaus, and New Vision.*2
Rayograph / Photogram often overlaps with Dada, Surrealism, Bauhaus, and New Vision. Reading those pages together makes it easier to see where method, institution, or critical language begins to diverge.*5
American-born artist who worked at the heart of Dada and Surrealism in Paris. Through Rayographs, solarisation and fashion photography, he transformed photography from a …
Hungarian-born artist and educator who, through Bauhaus teaching and photogram experiments, conceived of photography as an apparatus for renewing perception rather than …