Photograms are among the oldest experimental techniques in photography. By placing objects directly onto light-sensitive paper, an image is created without the use of a camera. The technique was used by artists such as Man Ray and László Moholy-Nagy.
I combine this technique with making contact prints, where a photograph or negative is placed directly onto photographic paper to create a (negative) copy. I complement these contact prints with physical objects such as plants from the garden or pages from a photography book. My first experiment in this field is a somewhat embarrassing confession: a very long time ago, I tried this technique using a page from Playboy magazine. The result turned out to be surprisingly interesting because the photographs printed on both sides of the page merged into a single image.
I enjoy working directly with photographic materials and chemicals. The results are quite unpredictable. You can make multiple contact prints from a single negative, but the outcome is rarely exactly the same. Unexpected things, such as bubbles forming between the contact prints, can produce remarkable images.
