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Photogram projects by Lloyd Godman - photogram artists

 

Sensitive Materials that can be used to make photograms & other potentials

While most photograms are made with standard black and white photographic paper, the Photogram is a process that lends itself to experimenting and in terms of materials, the limiting factor is only one's imagination.

Colour negative paper:
While we are most familiar with this paper through labs that process our colour snapshots, because it has to be processed in complete darkness it requires more specific equipment for processing. While it is more difficult if not impossible to see where and how the objects are placed on the paper, the process of making colour photograms becomes a random and tactile experience. However the objects can be placed on a sheet of glass with the light on and the paper slipped under in darkness for the exposure.

These materials can be processed both manually in a dark tube or a continuous feed processor. The materials are less readily available but can be purchased through a photographic company like Agfa, Kodak or Fuji.

While the contrast of the paper is constant, the colour of the final print can be altered dramatically by using the filters on the enlarger. It is a negative process which means the areas which received the most light will record as the darkest, and the colours projected will reverse in the processing. Depending on the filtration used in the enlarger, a red bottle might reproduce as cyan. However there are some
other factors that come into play: colour neg paper has an over all blue cast built in to compensate the tan base or orange colour that is inherent in a colour neg. Because the red transparent object like a bottle does not have this there would be a colour shift in the opposite direction of the tan base which might have to be allowed for by altering the colour filtration in the enlarger. Putting a clear piece of colour film with the orange base on it in the neg carrier is also a way of equalizing this shift.

However as the negative colour representation produces an abstraction which is most often an intrinsic part of the process, I tend to use the filters of the enlarger in an extreme way to push the colour in a way that is not done when making traditional colour prints. i.e. I might have the filter wound up to cc180yellow 120 magenta. Most often I do double exposures and would then do the other exposure at say 140cc cyan.

I have used this material for the


Evidence from the Religion of Technology project.

 

 

 

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