Rayograph was Man Ray's name for photogram, a type of photograph made without a camera or a lens. To make photograms, objects are placed onto light-sensitive paper and then exposed to light. The light areas of the print are where objects have rested on the paper and stopped light exposing the paper. Man Ray is an American visual artist that spent most of his career in Paris.
Man Ray used many objects to create his 'rayograph' such as thumb tack and coils of wire. To make his rayograph he used photosynthesized photo paper and exposed the light to the paper and objects to create the 'rayogram' The photo I am going to go into detail of his is the one on the left.
This photograph shows a minimalistic approach to setting up the image. However the feel the image gives off is very full, your eye is drawn to many things, which I believe it's better that it's simplistic as I believe it makes it more powerful. In the photo I can infer that there is a metal coil, and a circular object he exposed to the light for a certain amount of time. I really like the amount of time Man Ray has exposed his image for as I think the contrast between black and white is really solid and bold. The main element besides the objects he used to compose the image is light. It play one of the most important roles in taking an image which soon became known as 'cameraless' images. Without the use of exposing it to light and using chemicals to make the image visible would be nothing. The use of the light and the decision of how long he will expose the image to shows the deep contrast between black and white and objects and backgrounds. Though the texture isn't fully clear, the objects and tone of the image is. Within the photo the texture varies through out showing how the objects reacted to being exposed by the light for a certain amount of seconds (time). As Man Ray has not taken the image through the camera I can't really talk about how the image was taken except how he composed the image and set it up for the photogram to be occurring. As you can't angle the way you move the machine you have to do it with your objects, everything around photograms evolves around the exposure time and the way your objects are set out and how transparent they may be.
MY ATTEMPT AT PHOTOGRAMS
As this was a very mini experiment i dont have much to conclude upon, however i think i exposed the images well to the paper and developed it well as you can see the smallest details within the netting!! I think it went the best it could.