Throughout the history of photography, there have been large improvements in how people capture impressions of the world around them. It is easy to forget in the modern age that many experimentations brought us to the age of digital photography.

Before the lens came to be, photographers, inventors, and chemists captured natural items using light-sensitive paper. The creativity and experimentation of different chemicals allowed for the formation of the Photogram, which we will look at below.

Cover photo by Fidan Nazim qizi

Photo by Malcolm Hill

When is a Photograph not a Photograph?

A photogram is a form of what is known as camera-less photography. These are made possible by laying objects on light-sensitive paper. When exposed to UV light, the light-sensitive paper darkens in the areas in between the objects. This leaves a negative, where the black and white areas are reversed to the objects the creator has placed.

As a negative, the lightest areas are where no light has touched, and the darkest areas have been fully exposed to light. Grey areas have been partially exposed to UV rays, usually due to semi-transparent objects. All three create the tonal range of the shadow image. 

Photo by Lisa Fotios

History of the Photogram

The term photogram, like many in early photography, comes from Greek. Photo (phōs) comes from the idea of ‘light’, and Gram (grámma) is from ‘written/drawn letter’. The light-sensitive material used to coat the material used for photograms are usually silver nitrate (silver + nitric acid) or Silver halides (silver nitrate + a halogen). Ferric ammonium oxalate (iron salts) were also used.

In 1827, the first photograms came from in-camera by early French photographer Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. His Heliographs were negatives made from contact printing engravings from paper on to pewter plate coated in Bitumen of Judea.

1835. Henry Fox Talbot had created light-sensitive paper by brushing silver nitrate over paper already coated in table salt (accidentally creating silver halides). He then placed items on the paper, then leaving them in the sun’s rays. 1842. John Hershel used light-sensitive Iron solutions to create the Cyanotype. You will recognise these as the blue images that formed blueprints used  architecture and construction.

Photo by Taylor Deas-Melesh

Improvements to Photograms

Photograms were one of the first ways that people captured the scene around them. This process, although similar, created the idea of using objects on paper, but also stencils. Quite a few of those who advanced this photographic chemistry did this out of frustration of not being able to draw their scene. Talbot and Niépce were just two of these.

After the photogram, some continued to experiment and improve on the chemical solutions. they wanted to reduce the exposure times of the light-sensitive medium. Others looked at the way the chemicals were used. Some had used metal plates (Daguerre) whereas others had used paper (Talbot). One of the most important processes that photographs brought to photography was contact printing.

In 1847, Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard used silver nitrate and salt in egg whites to create the albumen print. By coating the paper first in egg white, it protected the paper from absorbing the chemicals, creating a much more detailed image from a negative. The negative, it is important to know, was placed on the paper and replicated from contact printing. It is the contact printing idea that the photogram had used, and stabilized as a strong base for early to modern photography.

Photo by Ivan Samkov