Eye Foreign Eye

photogram: a photogram is an image created on light-sensitive paper without the direct use of a camera- no negatives are involved and therefore no “shooting” is involved. to create imagery, objects and papers of varying translucencies are placed on the light-sensitive paper and exposed to a light source. the various levels of translucency will register shadows and highlights depending on how they are laid out on the paper– this is very similar to a unburn/suntan. if someone is laying out in the sun, and some jerk comes by and takes a stick and lays it on the skin of the person sunbathing, in a couple of hours, the outline of the stick is left behind on that person’s skin.

in some photo classes i’ve taken, this is usually one of the first assignments and is considered to be basic. i think this tends to convey the idea that photograms are simple. this could not be further from the truth. photograms can be complex and challenging.

last year, i started with basic photograms at the beginning of the year and i was not very satisfied with what my students had come up with.  so later in the school year, we revisited the photogram. i had my students create photograms using a variety of layers. they had to use a quote as a source of inspiration. the quote could come from anywhere, and pretty much say anything as long as it wasn’t something that’d get me fired. as part of the lesson, i also taught my students how to create high contrast images in photoshop.

if you’re interested, here’s the lesson, and here’s the photoshop tutorial. (right click and click <save as> to download)

here are the requirements for the assignment:

1. quote/piece of text that was important to them.
2. imagery on tracing paper
3. imagery on printer paper
4. imagery on acetate
5. imagery on opaque black construction paper.
6. all 5 were combined to create 1 photogram.

here are some of the samples– some of the samples include the layers that my students used in some of the samples.

sample 1. this one in particular was impressive because this student took the time to draw the details of the gears in the frame and even cut out all the little sprockets.

sample 2.

sample 3.

sample 4.

sample 5.

sample 6.

sample 7.

sample 8.

peace.