Photograms

The idea of photograms may seem simple, but they can raise some interesting questions in relation to photography and form. The photogram as an analogon of the objects that created it. "The photographic image is a message without a code". Other messages without a code (cinema, theatre, paintings, drawings), however they develop a supplementary meaning in their reproduction of reality. The treatment of the image signifies the second meaning, whether aesthetic or ideological (A Barthes Reader - A Photographic Message)

Floris Neusüss
"By removing objects from their physical context, Neusüss encourages the viewer to contemplate the essence of form. His photograms create a feeling of surreal detachment"
With practice, the photogram can be a sophisticated way to record an image, exploring texture through the transparency of your chosen objects.

Floris Neusüss 'Untitled', Berlin, 1962

I began creating photograms using lemons and watermelon, which had strange feeling to them somewhere between natural and synthetic. Although these fruits are natural, a human presence was evident because they had been sliced. The juice from the lemons left marks on the photogram which I was considering using as a pattern in a drawing, like a Japanese print. However, the lemon juice proved too difficult to control, so I returned to more still-life compositions. Creating a line drawing, however, I could do because I had a reel of black thread. I allowed the thread to fall freely onto the paper at first, cutting it at points when it had created a strong form. I quickly progressed to creating type with the thread, but this looked too clumsy, so reverted to composing abstract forms on the paper. As I was creating these compositions, I placed small beads onto the paper, at first opaque ones, then glass beads to get the effect of a hollow circle. These arrangements of odd lines and dots had a slight resemblance to the work of Joan Miró. Similarly to Miró's paintings, certain motifs were reappearing in each photogram.

The "Constellations" are the most precisely executed of all Miró's works. They grew out of reflections in water, showing how Miró could transform an observation of nature into a "cosmic realism". In this series of paintings various motifs (Moon, Sun, comets, eyes, insects, birds and women) would reappear, coexisting in a natural, harmonious order. André Breton said of the works: "They differ from and resemble each other... taken together in their progression and in their totality, each of them assumes the necessity and value of a component in a mathematical system." May 1941 Miró flees a German occupied France for Mallorca, where he continues work on the 23 Constellations, and finished them later that year in Mont-roig, his Catalonian home.

Joan Miró 'Ciphers and Constellations, in Love with a Woman', 1941

The photograms look to me like broken constellations, as if the black background were the night sky and the beads the stars, but the thread is unable to link the stars to create recognisable shapes. I tried not to think about this too much, as I risked over complicating the pieces.