Cameras

Cannon T70

Lubitel universal 166

Fold out camera

Lomogrpahy Super sampler

Lomography 360 camera

Shoot 5 - Disposable camera in colour

Taking inspiration from the Youtuber Dottie I have taken a shoot with 2 disposable cameras over the course of 2 days, and when even I wanted to document anything I took a picture. This was to force me to use film instead of using it sparingly. The pictures were taken in and around Reading University on a weekend when I was visiting my friend.
Dottie is a youtube who is very artsy and talks about subjects in a poetic way, and in one video she set herself a challenge to use 3 disposable cameras in 3 days, so I wanted to link that into the idea of using film isn't as precious as I have been using it and not thinking about setting and just shoot pictures.
I found that as they were so easy to use I was able to easily take pictured quickly as there were no setting to mess around with apart from flash.
The whole shoot has a nostalgia feel, It looks like the pictures I saw when I was a child. It really captured this feel of the prime time of film use. A lot of the pictures has this grain on it when it was taken at night without a flash. I took a few selfies, which in the context of when it looks like it was taken the selfie wasn't as common as it is now. I think the shoot went well, I used 2 cameras in 2 days and I struggled to do this, as I wanted to get perfect pictures when using film as I was paying for the pictures, in the end I used it as i would my mobile phone camera. I also found that in some cases the focal length of the picture is about 1/2 a meter which meant a few of my pictured were out of focus.
This is my first shoot in colour using a film camera, I couldn't develop them myself as our dark room wasn't equipped to do so, but I have got the negatives back so I can create black and white images from them if I wish. I also found that you don't feel as connected to the picture when you dont process it yourself, Its really just like using a digital camera but less expensive if you damage the camera.
I asked for it to be cross proceed but unfortunately I don't know if it was or wasn't, I would assume not as there is no evidence from the pictures. This I will now go onto look into a company called lomography who are trying to bring film back.

Duck pond in Reading, It looks old from how the saturation of colours are. It looks  like old film, how I remember our family photo album.

Swan on the pond,  I managed to snap a swan, and after I took it it jumped out and spread its wings to Chase us, didn't manage to wind the camera in time for an after shot.

Shooting from the hip doesn't work as well as you hope, I got a rather shaky picture,  I like how it very 

Th thing about this picture is that it looks old, but we have added the twits that we are taking a selfie, which a modern thing that people use phones for. 

Running up the stairs so we could put pizza in the oven. The colours in the picture is very off what they were which adds to the old aesthetic of the pictures. It looks a lot like they could have been taken along time ago.

In bed watching youtube, This looks very grainy which adds to the old aesthetic with a person using modern technology. 

Thisbedottie- disposable camera

Thisbedottie is a youtuber, She makes video logs and posts them online. They are mostly poems and creative throughs that she has come up with. This video inspired me to do a shoot. She talkes about how she set herself a challenge to use 3 disposable cameras in a day to make memories, even if they were not good ones. That didnt work, she struggled to use 100+ pictures in a day, so she changed the goal to 3 days 3 cameras.
The idea behind her taking the pictures was that she doesn't normally take enough to preserve memory, I wanted to use this idea to go against my grain and use 2 disposable cameras in 2 days and not care that it is film. As the mentality with film is waiting for the right shot and to use it sparingly.
This inspired me to use a disposable camera and to use colour with will be different to all the black and white I have taken.


Video Here

shoot 4- Camera less photography

The idea behind this shoot was to attempt cameras less photography in the style of man ray, and so I experimented in the dark room with movement and different textures and different objects that cast shadows onto the page. I found that water creates a different effect to a solid object. Moving hands over the page creates shadows and less time exposed so the image is slightly washed out. I then wondered how man ray would experiment with digital cameras photography today and I thought scanography would be a good places to start mixed with photoshop to create a surreal feel. I found an artist who was very simple with how she used a scanner, called Roberta Baily , who placed flower arrangements onto the scanner. Thomas Mc Donald used a scanner in a very unusual was and managed to take pictures of the streets, a set of houses from a scanner, which suits Man Rays style of surrealism which he was developing. I was unable to reproduce Mc Donalds work. I found that suing the dark room to create photograms was very hit and miss with what I could do, and sometimes it would work the others it wouldn't, this was also the case with the experimenting with the scanner. I found the photograms to be more rewarding than the scans, Due to how it was more freedom to add movement, rather than being restrained on the direction of the scanners scan.

To add to my experimenting of cameras less photography I used some light sensitive paint that works similarly to the dark room but requires the sun to use. I placed objects on tit and it came out as slightly lighter outline of the shape. 

Overall my shoot and experimenting worked well, I think it showed that there is a big difference in digital and film. I preferrer to use the dark room with cameras less photography as there is a lot more experimenting and different techniques that are not realistic to recreate using a scanner.

In the dark room I spent some time experimenting with photograms which was influenced by man ray. I found that just placing object on a page on nearly any exposure would produce a photogram that had very defined white patches and very dark blacks. This is where I started moving the objects in the frame or adding my hands into the mix to create shadows.which brought out some very strange and cool effects for showing motion. Other things I discovered are using object that refract light differently can cause different effects. So water  creates a ripple effect due to its refractive index , which is much the same with glass as well, and would imagine other object that are opaque would do something similar

I have experimented with light sensitive paint which is where you use a special pain on a piece of fabric and wet it with a sponge, then you place objecs on it and leave it to dry. This worked quite well for my first attempt at it, capturing the outline of the objects, much like a photogram but without a dark room. Also the paint was orange. This added to the more exciting look, only difference is it takes a long time so you cant use movement in the pictures.

I also looked into scnography looking at artists such as Roberta Bailey who both used the scanner in a different ways. I have also done a few and have looked at using peoples heads, and looking into objects and moving them around, much like I did with the photograms. This method of camera-less photography has the most colour as it scans in colour, which produces more of a contrast and real life feel than the photograms

Shoot 3 - Vian Maier using a TLR camera

This is my third shoot it was taken on holiday in devon, in and around sea side towns. I shot 2 rolls of 120 film with a TLR camera. I was shooting in the style of Vivian Maier which was to get candid pictures of people in the streets living there life. I got a few good pictures that worked well with the candid look, but I struggled with the focus point on the camera. This was due to how hard it is to quickly focus the camera. I was using a Lubitel 166 
 which is a old TLR camera make in the USSR. It was one of the better cheap TLR cameras that didnt cost a fortune. Like my first shoot I was suing Maiers idea of documenting her life as she goes. I found that using the Lubitel, it was hard to accurately focus the lens accurately when trying to get pictures of people. I found that guessing the distances was a far easier option. 
On the contact sheet there is a few scratches which is due to the glass cover on the frame when you are making the contact sheet, hence it is also on the other 120 film contact sheet.
Over the week I was taking pictures there was a mix of weather, I used my phone as a light meter so could get the aperture and speed on the camera right as I have not quite yet got the hang of guessing the settings for the camera, which is what Maier would have done. I found that using the camera to had to hold it at your stomach hight to use the view finder, It made it less obvious that I was taking pictures as I was walking. Which meant it would be easier to take pictures. They mention this in the documentary about Maier, and how probably the reason she used a TLR. 
I think that over all It was a very good shoot. The negatives look very good, although the prints were not as I thought they would be. Due to the size of the negative being 6 x 6 It meant I had to crop them. I found this harder to do than I thought. This didn't stop me but I found that I will have to think about my composure next time I use this camera. 
My favourite picture that came out well as a negative and in print was a picture of the harbour, In the picture the clouds are really defined and look very real.  It  was taken at a speed of 1/60 with an aperture of f 18  Due to the sun being behind the cloud giving a lot of light into the lens. I like that it is in black and white as I was able to print it myself, which adds to the excitement of a good picture coming out. 

This is a strange picture, It came out like this as when I placed it in the developer I put it upside-down and it came out very different to how I thought it would. I found that when the face of the picture scrapes against the side it with rub at the chemicals and wont come out as planned. It was a picture of 2 people walking off a boat. It came out a bit darker in the negative than I would have liked but I gave up with printing this picture.

We went to a wild life reserve and the penguins were apart of the enclosure. I wanted to get a contrast between the black and white penguins, It was harder than I thought to get the contrast. In hindsight I am now a lot better at making the white on the pictures white. I may try this again. I found it hard to take this picture as to use the view finder I had to be looking down. This was hard as there was a rail around the enclosure the same hight my camera was at.

This is my best print. I haven't done any post production, But the picture looks far better physically, the scanner quality doesn't do it justice. I like the picture a lot. I like how its done in 3rds and how the clouds look alive. I used a high f stop with this picture which would around for the wide range of detail in the picture. I think the focus was also in inmate setting so that would also add to the depth of field in the picture.

Richard Long

He is an english sculptor and photographer, He is famous for his use of land art which he started to develop with lines in the grass from where he was walking then take a picture of it. Such as 'A Line Made by Walking"  in 1967 .

Small White Pebble Circles- Richard long
1987

He first became well know in the 70s due to his epic walks, which he would create art from long walks sometimes lasting days, and would from stone circles to paining with mud in the 80s.  He would walk and produce art from it. The work always looks natural with one sculpture or other sort that he had made. A lot are circles made from wood and bits he had found on this walks. He has walked to some of the most remote places to make his art.

His other works also included sculpurs such as Small White Pebble Circles which isnt what Im looking at.  

This is what I want to take from this artist. Im interested in his process on how he conducted his art more than his work he produced. I want to use the theme of walking as an influence to my work with how I will conduct my comparison shoots. This also links back to Vivian Maier, who would walk in Chicago and New York when she was working there and looking after the children she was a nanny for.

Experimenting 360 film camera

We used a 360 film camera that spun around when you triggered the camera. We used an old film in our cupboard, to our surprise it wasn't a fresh film. It had been used by another group of students about 8 years ago. This was an interesting occurrence, as its something that can only happen with film. It is one of those things that is very unique to film, taking 2 pictures on the same negative and finding that they match up in some ways.
Along the picture you have people that look like they have their foot in someones face, and there are times when there are whole people within other people which wasn't planned but looks good. The lighting required for the 400 iso film was very high so the only picture that came out well was the one taken outside. I found that the struggle was to line up the pictures while printing them. It was hard to line them up after I had developed them but worked well enough to produce a picture.

Shoot 2-Comparison

This is my 2nd shoot it was taken In the Forrest linking it to the artist Richard long who created his art around walks where he would pick up objects every 20 steps to create some art at the end of the walk. I used 2 cameras so I could directly compare film and digital .A Nikon film camera and a Cannon D1200 Digital, which both used a 50 mm lens, this was to get the cameras the same opportunity to take the picture.  I went down to the forest and walked and every 100m I took a picture. This was so I would take pictures of lots of different things. Some pictures on the film came out very under exposed which was due to the lighting in the forrest, Where the digital camera has a built in flash, the film camera did not which was a disadvantage, but is a feature in the digital camera. I found that over all the quality of the digital camera was better but the process of film is more involved and what you do in the dark room which shapes the final product of the picture. My favourite picture was one of the first I took, which was the one with the  tyre hanging from a tree. Originally when I developed the picture I put the negative into the projector back to front, so the picture came out very different to what was planned. This is something that can be changed in photoshop, but is also something that can only happen in film accidentally. I also found that the way the pictures are printed are different, with the projector stretching the picture with the film vs the digital picture. This is probably due to my ability to use the projectors to I don't get a distorted image, this can be seen in the picture of the wooden structure. The film camera was a 35mm film which is a compact film format. It produces average quality negative resolution which I would get a better quality if I used a 120 film camera, which I will use in my next shoot, by using a TLR camera, taking influence from Vivian Maier. 

The picture is taken of a structure that was found in the forest. It was taken with the 2 different cameras at the same distance with the same type of lens. It was a surprise to see that the results of the pictures was very different. I like that the colours in the digital creates a modern look while the film is very washed out and makes it look very old. I found that when I was in the dark room the grey scale contasted well, but the scanner doesn't do the photos justice.

This is my best shots from the shoot. I haven't edited them but I have been fair to both sides of the comparison and have left them in the state I shot them in. I found that the film camera had a smaller focal length than the digital. There is a lot more detail in the digital than the film. I still prefer the Film as it feels satisfying to get a picture out of the dark room. Even though the quality of the digital looks nicer and more professional. I like how in the film the picture isn't as cropped as the digital. This also allows you to see the refection in the water more clearly, which adds more context to the location and what is around the tyre

Conclusion

Through my research I have discovered a lot about the differences between digital and film, I like how with film it is a physical thing. It is something you have to craft from when you buy the film to when you produce an image in the dark room, which has many possibilities to manipulate your image pre and post production. Unlike digital I have found  that it is far easier to use as its available to more people and far easier to get started in photography due to the digital age. The different experimental techniques that have been used are so specific to the media of film and digital that its hard to directly compare what you have found out. Experimenting with chemicals to affect the colour of a picture is similar to the filter and the use of post production software such as photoshop,  you may get similar effect but they are very different. I like how using film gives you a different creative movement in your photography than using digital. There are more decisions that can be made to change the final outcome of the picture. Film and digital are very similar and it all comes down to preference and situation, where I prefer film now, I would say that I didn’t last year, I have discovered that he different styles of camera with film compared to the very generic digital camera set up is why I prefer film as it gives people a chance to choose different types of focusing such as range finders, to guessing or external ones, and you learn your cameras quirks, where as digital they are all so similar. It all comes down to your preference and what you want to achieve with the medium.

I think that the way I will use the artist is by directly comparing them in a shoot, and choosing and artist then directly compare it to the digital image. I think that I could do many things such as look into cameraless and directly compare the 2 different types of work. I think it will work well. I will need to learn how to use the dark room better that i did, and work on how I use it. I think I will be a learning curve to initialy use film and get a good comparison but by the end I think I will have a good grasp using film in the dark room.

Initial shoot- 35mm

Over the summer I had a few rolls of film to experiment, At this point in time I was documenting my summer, and doing artist research on the side, so my initial shots linked into Vivian Maier, Who in essence documented her life, which is what I was tying to do over the summer. She would take her camera where ever she went to document where she was. I was also just starting to use film, finding how to use the cameras and how to develop and print the pictures in the dark room.

In a lot of the shots it looks very washed out, this is due to the fact that a lot of the pictures were darker which means I had to expose the picture for longer when crating the contact sheet. I used an automatic cannon film camera for this shoot, which used 35mm film. I had no theme but to attempt to to document what I did in the summer. The locations was a mix of Ireland, the New Forest and Greenbelt Festival. ( I have only shown one contact sheet but I took 3 roles of 35mm film and 1 role of 120 film) 

In a lot of the pictures taken with the 120 camera you had to guess and judge distances which was a struggle, so a few are out of focus, further more the 120 film camera had no lock to stop you from taking double exposures, which caused problem as on a few occasions I took double exposures so the picture was then over exposed.

I used a film with a 100 ISO which for the time wasn't the best, so a lot of my pictures have got camera shake or are under exposed. 

Vivian Maier Street Photography Vs 21st Century News Photographers

Vivian Maier was  photographer from the 1950s. She bought her first camera in 1952, which was a rollefelx TLR camera. She was only discovered after she died, Her stuff was sold off at auction and in her possessions, John Maloof bought a box of negatives and undeveloped film, and later acquired the other boxes. Around 100,000 negatives and slides were discovered and John Maloof set to work scanning in all her work and eventually got her discovered. He produced and directed a film, which is titled “finding Vivian Maier” which gives an in depth look into how Maier was discovered.

With Maier her work is was questionable to whether it could be considered art, due to how in photography there are vital choices the artist makes, e.g. what paper to print on, what chemicals where being used. Majority of her wok was not developed by her, and the work that was she got sent to France to get printed in he town she grew up in. In the documentary you see them visiting the shop and talking to the owner, who was the son and grandson of the person ho printed Maiers work. This was all explained by her letters which were sent to the shop.This gave Maloof a good idea and specifications to create the rest of her work how she wanted it. This discovery showed how she actually wanted her work to be printed and shown, instead of initially thinking she didn't want them shown. 

Before Maloof discovered her work, not a lot  was known about her. Her parent were European and they were out of the picture early on into her life. The information that we now know came from the fact that she worked as a nanny in Southampton NY, and in 1956 she moved to Chicago where she had her own private bathroom which she used as a dark room, so when her film reals were found all the negatives where from 1956 to the early 70s where the children she looked after grew up and she found a new job. This is when she switched to colour film. Also her box of undeveloped films started to build up due to not being to easily develop her film.

She chose the job as that enabled her to have accommodation and the availability to explore to take pictures. There is also a lot of evidence o show that she has traveled the world. Where she took pictures , trips to Canada in 1951 and 1955, in 1957 to South America, in 1959 to Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, in 1960 to Florida, in 1965 she’d travel to the Caribbean Islands. Where ever she went she was always drawn to the less fortunate in society. She felt she could relate to them.

1973 - Chicago- Vivian Maeir

The first picture was taken in Chicago in august of 1973. It was taken when Maier had moved to colour film as she was not developing them herself. Its a picture of the news paper. The main headline in the news paper was about Nixon claiming that the boming over Cambodia saved American lives. I think that the idea that Nixons eyes are covered was also a reason for her shot, we are told that she is very political and the eyes being covered could relate to how Nixon is blind to collateral damage that he is causing in Cambodia .It is a strange picture to take for Maier. This is because she kept hundreds of news papers piled up in her room, she kept them every day as she always though it would come in use or she wanted to save the article. To take a picture of this news paper meant that it must have meant something to her. 

May 1955 - NY - Vivian Maier

This picture is of a man in May 1955 in New York was taken on one of Maier walks around New York. The picture was taken with a Rolieflex and would have been in the moment. She use to take pictures by just walking up to people and taking pictures. She would focus the camera and then walk up to someone and take a picture. You can see this because the man is looking at her in the eye and at this point in time doesn't know is picture is being taken. She managed to do this on many occasions. The shadows on the mans face are really defined which shows how old he is. The subject is unknown, and will probably never know who he is. The photo was taken in black and white and was most likely been a negative scanned in my Maloof in the early days of getting Maiers work know.

The fact Maier wasn't a journalist gives us an insight into the everyday life in the 50s to 70s America in Chicago and New York, and in the country's she traveled to. The images she takes are often the lower class which is who she identified with more than anythingelse which is why there are lots of images relating to that, and because its not as well know to us this type of life as its not shown in the mainstream media, she had an importance because she was discovered in the way that she was.

I will be using a TLR camera like Vivian Maier did. This is also because I can used 120 film which gets a higher quality of pictures as you can make it larger before you lose the quality of the picture. It also is an excellent type of camera to take pictures in the street due to the location of where the camera hangs and you can still see what you are taking a picture of. Although the focusing will be hard.

The comparison I am making to Maier is the modern-day photo journalist, this is because Maier documented her life much like photo journalists documents events which get put into newspapers. An example of a famous photo journalist was Tim Hetherington who covered the Libya civil war, and many other evens in Afghanistan, Cambodia to London and demonstrations and other events. Where he takes pictures of the lower class and connect with them in an attempt to get there story across. To make shocking images for the news or some other form of media.

The picture that I want to look at from Hetherington was a picture taken in a hospital in 2011, It was taken with a digital cameras , which will be due to how many pictures a digital camera can take. The picture shows a man in a hospital bed on the bottom 1/3 of the image, splitting it up into thirds. This picture is meant to shock. It is meant to show how the war is effecting people and how there is a lot of devastation due to this war. There are  other pictures in a hospital where there are many people in the room with all minor injuries.  

I find there is a difference between the 2 types of mediums to documentation. I feel that Maier was far more everyday and small time photography, whereas Hetherington was big scale news papers but less known to the public. I think It would be more appropriate to compare Maier to a street vloger, who runs a small time blog and documenting their day through the camera with pictures or video. Although Maier became famous after her death

Mathew Cetta photogenic alchemy vs James Welling Filters

Untitled- Mathew Cetta 2012

Untitled- Mathew Cetta 2012

Mathew Cetta Is a photographer, he did a fine arts in photography degree in New York and originally wanted to be a retoucher . The set of work we are looking at is called photogenic alchemy, which was a process of destroying the film before you use it to take pictures, the effects of it is hard to repeat and work in different ways depending on the chemicals that you left the film in. 

The list includes Vinegar, olive brine, hydrogen peroxide,cough syrup, ginger juice febreze,cola, boil it, ammonia, tooth paste, bleach. And many other ways of destroying the emulsion on the colour film which messes up the colours in it.

 "I started out my career as a photographer wanting to become a retoucher and I was obsessed with perfection. But perfection is boring!” This was when Cetta was going through a rough patch in his life and just wanted to experiment and explore new ideas. Later lomography picked up his work and wrote an article on how to achieve this effect with the colour film and many other photography sites showed and interest in him.

Looking at his work, all the pictures that are shown all have different effect on them, showcasing all the different chemicals that were used to create that effect, even though it will change outcome every time. All the photogenic alchemy is done on film, and the colours are all surreal and obscure, it looks a lot like a filter. This first picture is of Brooklyn Bridge, the composition of the picture is taken from a street from the Brooklyn side, which gives the bridge a large presence in the picture, the picture isn’t clear and looks very over exposed, which could be to do with the chemicals affecting more than the colour layer on the film. All over the picture you can see streaks, which could be due to the chemicals creating stains in patches over the picture. Around the edge on the top there are stains which happens a lot when you don’t agitate the film when developing as the developer doesn't get moved around enough.

The second picture shows a satellite dish with a butterfly on it, it has a different chemical on than the previous picture. This one is more interesting due to how clear it is in the centre than the picture of the bridge. It has on the left a darker purple than the rest of it which shows how unpredictable this technique is, but also how fun it can be. As he developed his idea of the photogenic alchemy he got better at creating images that were in focus and you could clearly make out what is in the picture instead of silhouette type look, which is present in the bridge picture. 

He says on his blog he had no subject to take the picture of, he just takes his cameras around where ever he goes and takes pictures of things that interest him. He takes pictures of everything he can find that catches his eye.

untitled- James Welling -2006-9

James Welling was an artist we visited in unit 2, where he was an influence for colour. He uses filters to get contrasting and complementing colours around a glass house. His work is varied throughout his career, and the work I am looking at is Glass House. He produced this piece work  due to how this house hasn't changed since the 1950s, where as with the filters he has made it look and feel different depending on the colour, each individual colour makes you think something different about the house. This effect added with Welling revisiting the house to take pictures adds to the change and how it hasn't changed. I know this by the style of the house and its interior, which welling said hasn't changed from when it was first put in.

This picture was taken with a digital camera, and due to how similar the house is on all angles it is unknown which side it was taken from but majority was from the front. This was taken with Welling holding filters up to the camera, where he uses a mix of green, yellow and blue. This adds and interning effect to how the light from the sun is going through the filters.

Unlike Cetta, Wellings pictures includes no people for a subject as it all centerer around the house, although they chose film or digital due to the style of work thy were making, as they were both taken in the 2006 and onwards, where digital was around.It all came down to how they worked and what they wanted to achive.Both set of pictures look very surreal in their nature of chaining the normal to something very different. The difference in them is more, the digital is all very random. Where the filters are predictable and is very easy to recreate. 

Man Ray photograms Vs Scanography

Man Ray Untitled 

My first artists is Man ray was a painter originally and picked up a camera in 1915, he was 25, after seeing Alfred Stieglitzs work. He worked for vogue and began to experiment in the dark room,he created something similar to photograms which he called “rayographs" which differs due to the moment in them. He was apart of the surrealist movement, which links into is work in the dark room in the 1920s, the colours are all black and white which is how all film photography was in 1920. he constructs his pictures by laying objects on some photographic paper and when he is  exposing them he moves, or he moves is hands around crating shadows and parts of the paper which will be less exposed than the others, which would create a picture. 

He was apart of the surrealist movement in paris which was formed from the dissipation of dada, this was a time when people were challenging the norm of art. Surrealism was a way of producing abstract pieces of work, mostly from ideas and visions which a group of artists and writers in France, which Man Ray was apart of. 

Man Ray Untitled

The work is very abstract which reflects his experimentation. He was trying lots of different ways of exposing his objects and moving them. The work I'm looking at is mainly untitled mainly because of the amount he did, from experience in the dark room I can see that a lot must have gone wrong when he was in the dark room. There is a lot o movement in the picture, it  looks like a spring has been dragged across the picture, and in the top left corner there is hand movement. 

This would have not been posible without the use of a darkroom. which the first dark rooms were made in the early 19th century when people were first experimenting with photgraphy, but it wouldnt be intill the 1920 where the 35mm became avalable that man ray had better access to a dark room to create his photograms.

A photogram is using the projectort in the dark room to expose light sensitive paper, when you put objects on it it create a silhouette in white of the image. What Man Ray did was he moved the images around creating movement in his photograms. This light sensitive paper would only be used in a dark room until you develped them.

I think that the work looks very abstract, compared to his other work, as in them a lot of the objects are static and has no feel of movement. This picture to the left almost looks like it could be depicting a scene with how he has purposely placed his objects but has no movement in it as he was making the photogram. 

Roberta Bailey

A modern day version of this look and feel is using a scanner to produce images without a camera, the technique involves covering the scanner to make it dark and placing objects on it, this recreates a digital version of photograms. A photographer that uses this is Roberta Bailey, who was inspired by photograms but was unable to have access to an enlarger or a dark room to process a photogram, Her bio explains ‘I am in total awe of Nature; it’s beauty, design and colors.’ which was her inspiration for her set of photographs which she has produced. She comes form an design and art background with university which is where she first started doing photography and working with colour.Her pictures in this set are all flowers that have a wide range of colour and textures. Due to the method, which was to pit the flowers into a glass tub or tank and place some paper or fabric behind the flowers to create a background with different feels and textures. The flowers are nearly all pressed up against the glass which gives it a real look but very much like a painting without any depth.

Thomas Mc Donnell- Houses

Another Photographer that uses scanners but in a different way is Tomas McDonnell who had the idea of using a scanner outside, which produced some strange effects, as he was holding the scanner it has wobbles in add to this surreal effect of all of his work. This photographer isn't a photographer by profession, but he was experimenting with using cameras photography. The colours in the pictures look very washed out as looks much like a dream world than real life. He started taking pictures as a way to relax after his high stress job and he found that initially he was scanning in flowers, such as orchids, and wanted to try to be more creative that he had been. The picture is of 3 houses, of a typical American setting. The picture is very surreal due to the motion in the picture, I think this links to Man Ray very well due to how he is experimenting with the medium at the time he was working, really just experimenting because he could, much like man ray. The rest of his work can be found on flicker which have a verity of panorama the looks to them using the scanner, called outside scanorgaphy. His other pictures that he does are scans similar to Roberta Bailey, but with a black background. 

This is something that differs from he photograms of man Rays, due to the availability to use colour, and even if he could have it is a far more complicated method of developing and printing than just black and white. I find that Man Ray has more context that the modern day examples, as he was doing it to be apart of a surrealist movement.