A chemigram (from "chemistry" and gramma, Greek for "things written")
The term Chemigram was coined in the 1950s by Belgian artist Pierre Cordier.
History
Johann Schulze is regarded as the first to obtain a chemigram-like image; in 1725, he produced such a work using opaque paper and a bottle of silver salts.
Hippolyte Bayard produced another chemigram-like image during sensitization tests he conducted in 1839.
In the 1930s and 1940s, the German
Edmund Kesting and the French
Maurice Tabard produced pictures by painting with developer and fixer on photographic paper. It is the Belgian artist
Pierre Cordier (born 1933), however, who has been most responsible for developing and exploring chemigrams.
From his early days, in 1956, he was one of its rare practitioners, and contributed to its development by expanding its technical and esthetic possibilities. He adopted the name chimigramme in French in 1958 (
chemigram in English and Dutch, Chemigramm in German, chimigramma in Italian, and quimigrama in Spanish and Portuguese), the most widely accepted designation today.
In 1974 Josef H. Neumann advanced the process in his
by incorporating optical elements before applying chemicals.
[Gabriele Richter: Joseph H. Neumann. Chemogramme. in: Color Foto. Heft 12, 1976, p. 24.]
Process
A chemigram is made by painting with chemicals on photographic paper and lies within the general domain of experimentation in the
visual arts. It requires the use of materials from
silver halide-based photography (light-sensitive paper, developer, and fixer), but it is not a photograph. Like the
photogram, the chemigram is made without a camera, yet it is created in full light instead of in the darkness of the
darkroom. For this reason it is not "light that writes" (
photo graphein in the Greek) but rather "chemistry that writes".
Chemigrams can be made solely with photo paper, developer, and fixer, with results that will somewhat resemble watercolor. The possibilities can be multiplied by using materials from painting (such as varnish, wax, or oil),
In contrast to chemigrams, the production of Chemogram consists of two different steps. First an enlarger is used to partly or fully expose a photographic image onto photographic paper in the darkroom and thereafter the images are processed with chemicals under full light.[ Hannes Schmidt: Bemerkungen zu den Chemogrammen von Josef Neumann. Ausstellung in der Fotografik Studio Galerie von Prof. Pan Walther. in: Photo-Presse. Heft 22, 1976, S. 6.]
Chemogramm *Traumarbeit* (1976)]]
Notes
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