Photograms

Artist Statement

The subject of my photogram Raindrops is rain falling into puddles. To make this image I took pencil sharpeners for the raindrops and rolls of tape for the puddles. I placed the tape at the bottom of the paper to fill in some of the empty space. Then I placed the pencil sharpeners in the top and middle of the paper. I tried to place them at equal distances apart to make the image more aesthetically pleasing. After exposing the image for 5 seconds, I developed, stopped, and fixed the paper. Then to rinse off the chemicals I put my image in the rinser. Finally I took out my image, squeegeed it, and hung it up in the dryer. I choose to create this image because I thought that it could look like a real event, but really it was just an image. Another reason I choose to create this image was that I thought that the pencil sharpeners were an interesting shape that looked realistic.

When I first had my idea for my image I wanted the there to be many little raindrops and for the puddles to be going inward instead of outward. Once we got into the dark room I realized that the puddles would have to go outward. I also realized that my image would have large and few raindrops. To balance the size of the raindrops I moved the tape more downward to create more space. If I could re-do this project I would try to get rid of the little black dots in the lower right raindrop.

I think that the meaning behind this image is to not assume things. Because I made an image out the objects that look like other things, it is easy to instantly assume what the image is, but everything is not always as it seems. The image relates to my life because when I was little my dad and I, anytime it rained, would go sit in our garage and watch the rain. The image shows the build up of rain at the bottom of the image, which to me, represents the pile of things me and my dad would talk about as we watched the rain.