Often photograms are referred to as having ghost like qualities, ( Adam Fuss worked on a series titled My Ghost) qualities that dematerialize the most tangible of objects, strip them down to a new essential. Man Ray likened the enigmatic quality of the photogram to the dreams of objects. Like X-ray vision, emanations of light, they have the ability to reference objects in a manner that our refined visual senses can not, to record planes of existence beyond our normal experience. To teach us a new way of seeing, they can strip an abject to its skeleton, down to its bones.
While there is the potential for both abstraction and representation when making any photogram how much one leans one way or the other is a personal choice. Images can be made that are so they leave some recognizable trace of the object, or there is total abstraction and no semblance of the object.


The recognition of any representation of an object or any part of an object in a photogram is loaded with meaning. How loaded that becomes depends upon the object and the context in which it is placed. Adam Fuss's photograms of dead rabbits with their entrails strewn across the image is an example. Once we understand what the object is on the paper we read it in an emotive manner.

Not all objects evoke such an emotive response, and while a viewer can be left to their own devices, there are various strategies that can be used to suggest meaning in the work.

Title

This photogram image from Aporian Emulsions where the emulsion was painted in the arrow motif on the paper, was titled St Sebastian's Arrows. While it is loaded with religious meaning it is actually about the environment. It suggests the earth is a body that we shoot arrows, drive nails etc into.

 

Text etc. combined as part of the image

The final images from the Adze to Coda series incorporated binary code (1&0) photograms as a reference to the contemporary tools of our age. The Numbers were simply cut out from cardboard.