Cameraless photography

Mainecoonmaniac · Oct 10, 2018

Pierre Cordier's work is quite interesting and challenging.

jim10219 · Oct 10, 2018

Very cool!

removed account4 · Oct 10, 2018

thanks for posting this link !
it is the rawest of chemical photography
light-painting ( photo - graphy ).

slackercrurster · Oct 10, 2018

I use a scanner for my cam. Is that considered cameraless?

erian · Oct 10, 2018

slackercrurster said:
I use a scanner for my cam. Is that considered cameraless?

Do you have lens or pinhole?

Billy Axeman · Oct 10, 2018

slackercrurster said:
I use a scanner for my cam. Is that considered cameraless?

The idea of cameraless photography is that you are using the light sensitive material (film, paper) directly without a camera.

eddie · Oct 10, 2018

Thanks. I enjoyed that.

Maris · Oct 10, 2018

Camera-less mark-making on light sensitive surfaces is a richly ambiguous thing.

Pierre Cordier makes patterns but not pictures of anything. The chemigram, like an abstract painting, is the thing itself and not a representation of something else. And if you allow that the core of photography lies in "pictorial representation" then Cordier's magnificent chemigrams are not photographs and should not be pushed down into that ill-fitting classification.

When I do an audit of my own photographs I find that the majority are camera-less. This in the sense that they are positives on film base or paper and are made by contact exposure with large negatives. Sure, the negative has been in a camera but the numerous positives have not. They haven't even been through a lens. And they are, I plead, actual photographs in the service of pictorial representation.

Were it not for Pierre Cordier's striking invention these musings would probably not be provoked. Thanks Pierre.

AgX · Oct 10, 2018

http://www.pierrecordier.com/20.html

winger · Oct 10, 2018

Very cool! Thanks for sharing the video! I've been wanting to try chemigrams for several years, but haven't had a chance, yet. (My time management skills need some major work.)

Berkeley Mike · Oct 11, 2018

I thought that photos require light capture of some sort. This work seems proximate to photography only in that it uses materials common to photography. Let's say I use photo paper to make an Origami figure and slather it with some fluid medium or bindable material and process it in photo chemicals. Is that photography?

AgX · Oct 11, 2018

Mike, Cordier uses light, best seen at his very first chemigram he described: it was a solarized photogram.

Maris, you made a point in not calling it photography as it is not a represention of the environment, but a work on its own. However a photogram is typically still considered a photograph.

By the way, Cordier uses the same spread I prefer. Though I eat it...

removed account4 · Oct 11, 2018

as far as i am concerned you don't need a obscura to make a photograph
it ( photography) just means it is an image made ( drawn ) from light
it could be a sheet of constructon paper bleached with something on top of it
or even a shadow on a wall ... but then again my definition is not as rigid as maris'
or as rigid as some people's i have heard ( only portraits and only black and white )

i figure its a big tent, with and without cameras, with resists without resists ...

erian · Oct 11, 2018

Berkeley Mike said:
I thought that photos require light capture of some sort. This work seems proximate to photography only in that it uses materials common to photography. Let's say I use photo paper to make an Origami figure and slather it with some fluid medium or bindable material and process it in photo chemicals. Is that photography?

My revisioned understanding is that the photograph is an image formed by photons that is stable at least for limited time.

Berkeley Mike · Oct 13, 2018

AgX said:
Mike, Cordier uses light, best seen at his very first chemigram he described: it was a solarized photogram.

Maris, you made a point in not calling it photography as it is not a represention of the environment, but a work on its own. However a photogram is typically still considered a photograph.

By the way, Cordier uses the same spread I prefer. Though I eat it...

Got it, scanned the video....

CMoore · Oct 26, 2018

Last semester, at my local college, i took their Alternative Process class.
Chemigrams is what i chose for my final.....because i have no artistic ability.
You burn through A LOT of chemicals.
I tried all kinds of stuff. Just about anything anybody would have in their refrigerator and garage, including string, oil, gasoline and bug spray.
I also used paint and eye make-up.....also Salt and Pepper.
When i found an interesting combination, i made Two.....one that went first into The Developer, and then the other that went first into The Fix.
I was shocked at the positive reception i got from my teacher and fellow students. None of them had ever heard the term Chemigram before, nor had they ever seen one.
They wanted to know what they were.
I told them it was art for people with no artistic talent.
I told my teacher that i had not planned on turning in this final assignment, because i had thrown them all away in disgust.
But....... they were ALL returned. The garbage company brought them all back to my house and asked me not to throw anymore of them in the trash. It seems, just the sight of them, were making the prison laborers at the land-fill facility vomiting sick.

AgX · Oct 27, 2018

CMoore said:
I was shocked at the positive reception i got from my teacher and fellow students. None of them had ever heard the term Chemigram before, nor had they ever seen one.

I too only know this term in context of Pierre Cordier's work.

removed account4 · Oct 27, 2018

CMoore said:
I told them it was art for people with no artistic talent.

that's kind of funny cause it probably takes more effort to do cameraless work
depending on how in deep or shallow in the ocean you wade and wander and if sharks are swimming close to shore ..

Cameraless photography

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