Art & MusicGreek → English
Photogram
/ˈfoʊtəɡræm/noun
An image made without a camera by placing objects on light-sensitive paper and exposing it.
The Greek roots
φῶς
phôs
light
γράμμα
grámma
something written or drawn
Literally: “light drawing”
The story of the word
When photography was new its name was not settled, and several writers pressed the case for photogram on the grounds that telegram stands to telegraph as photogram should to photograph. They lost. The word returned in the 1920s attached to something else entirely, the cameraless image made by laying objects straight onto sensitised paper, as Man Ray and Moholy-Nagy did, so the oldest photographic technique now carries the youngest surviving name.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
photographtelegramdiagramgrammarphoton
In a sentence
The show opens with a wall of photograms: keys, feathers, a pair of scissors.
Anna Atkins printed her algae as photograms in 1843.