Camera-less photography: artists

'Untitled, (Körperfotogramm), Kassel, 1967'

Here, the varying proximity of parts of the body to the paper has created sharper or softer outlines. Where the model's hands were in contact with the paper, the outline is clear. Where parts of the body, such as the head, were further away, it is blurred.

'Untitled, (Körperfotogramm)

The bodies in Neusüss's 'whole-body photograms' appear to leap or float, as though caught in space, implying dreams of flight or nightmares of falling. Here, an adult figure adopts a foetal position silhouetted against vague indications of an interior. Neusüss's shadowy figures often suggest an underlying symbolic narrative of sensuality, fertility, dreams or the subconscious.

'Bin Gleich Zurück, (Be Right Back), (Fotogramminstallation), 1984/87'

Neusüss's art often acknowledges that the making of each unique photogram is a kind of performance. In this installation piece, a chair stands on a sheet of photographic paper that retains the shadow of a person now absent from the seat. The playful title becomes increasingly poignant as each year passes.

'Hebe 1796 (Skulptur von Antonio Canova, 1757-1822) Alte Nationalgalerie Berlin'

Since 2000 Neusüss has been making photograms of sculpture in various museum collections. In this work, overlapping double exposures - both positive and negative - create multiple views of Canova's sculpture of Hebe, the Greek goddess of youth. These sculpture photograms speak of artists' enduring fascination with animate bodily forms and how they can be transformed into idealised inanimate imaginings.

'Gewitterbild, Kassel, 1984'

Sometimes, the abstract qualities of Neusüss's work are the result of natural forces. The image shown here was created by placing photographic paper in a garden at night during a thunderstorm, and letting lightning expose the paper.

'Homage to Talbot: The Latticed Window, Lacock Abbey, 2010'

This window at Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire, was the subject of the very first photographic negative, made by William Henry Fox Talbot in 1835. After covering the interior of the window with photographic paper at night, Neusüss then exposed the paper by shining a light from outside. The resulting photogram recreates the subject of Talbot's original small negative, but life size. This version of the window photograph was commissioned for the 'Shadow Catchers: Camera-less Photography' exhibition at the V&A (2010).

Mr.

Mr.

'Chemigram 29/11/57 I, 29 novembre 1957'

Cordier has described his works as a mutation, as hybrid and marginal - fake photographs of an imaginary, improbable and inaccessible world. Writing to Cordier in 1974, the photographer Brassaï exclaimed: 'The result of your process is diabolical - and very beautiful. Whatever you do, don't divulge it!

'Chemigram + Photogram circa 1958 CAT. 13'

This piece is among Cordier's earliest works and combines the two forms of experimental photography: the photogram and chemigram. Fittingly, its cosmic yet small-scale appearance signals a new beginning, like a nucleus of energy before the Big Bang.

'Chemigram 8/2/61 I, 8 février 1961'

The simplest form of chemigram involves the application of photographic developer and fixer to gelatin-silver photographic paper, using the chemicals like watercolours. Developer creates dark areas, while fixer produces lighter tones. Cordier used this method here, pouring rather than brushing the chemicals on to a lightly oiled sheet of photographic paper.

'Chemigram 7/5/82 II ''Pauli Kleei ad Marginem''

Paul Klee's painting Ad Marginem (1930) shows prehistoric-looking creatures and foliage surrounding a solar motif. Cordier recasts Klee's painting diagrammatically, transforming the solar disc into a triangle and retaining the original placement of forms but as if in an alien code

'Chemigram 20/3/92 "from La Suma of Jorge Luis Borges"

Cordier's fondness for labyrinthine patterns, this time in the form of words, is shown in this reference to the Argentinian writer, poet and philosopher Jorge Luis Borges. It is composed of letter forms that spell out Borges's poem 'La Suma'. The letters, however, are almost impossible to decipher, their shapes joining together as paths forking in different directions.

'Chemigram 31/7/01 ''Hommage à Georges Perec''

'Chemigram 31/7/01 ''Hommage à Georges Perec'', chemigram on gelatin-silver paper by Pierre Cordier, 2001. Museum no. E.856-2010. Gift of the artist

'Breathing in the Beech Wood, Homeland, Dartmoor, Twenty-four Days of Sunlight, May 2004'

In photography as in photosynthesis, light plays a fundamental role in creation. This work was made using beech leaves gathered from late April to early June in the artist's garden on Dartmoor. Each vertical line was printed on one day, with the time period increasing incrementally from one day between the first lines to around two weeks in the later stages.

'Petworth Window 13 February 2000'

Petworth House in West Sussex is famous for its long façade of windows facing the park and for the light-flooded watercolours painted by there Turner in the 1830s. Fabian Miller's work also recalls Turner's deathbed attempts to observe the light through his window and the latticed window of Lacock Abbey in Fox Talbot's first photographic negative of 1835.

'The Night Cell, Winter 2009/10'

'The pictures I make', says Fabian Miller, 'are of something as yet unseen, which may only exist on the paper surface, or subsequently may be found in the world. I am seeking a state of mind which lifts the spirit, gives strength and a moment of clarity.'

'Year One. Ogronious: The Time of Ice'

For the series Year One, Fabian Miller produced one work every day over the course of a year. At the end, he selected ninety-six of the images for a book. He divided them into twelve equal sections, titled according to the Celtic ‘Coligny’ calendar, one of the oldest of its kind, and chose one work - as shown here- to represent each month. The result is a sustained investigation into form and colour alongside the cycle of time.

'Year One. Giamonios: Shoots Show'

For the series Year One, Fabian Miller produced one work every day over the course of a year. At the end, he selected ninety-six of the images for a book. He divided them into twelve equal sections, titled according to the Celtic ‘Coligny’ calendar, one of the oldest of its kind, and chose one work - as shown here- to represent each month. The result is a sustained investigation into form and colour alongside the cycle of time.

'Year One. Cutios: The Time of Winds'

For the series Year One, Fabian Miller produced one work every day over the course of a year. At the end, he selected ninety-six of the images for a book. He divided them into twelve equal sections, titled according to the Celtic ‘Coligny’ calendar, one of the oldest of its kind, and chose one work - as shown here- to represent each month. The result is a sustained investigation into form and colour alongside the cycle of time.

'Chladni Figure'

Ernst Chladni was an 18th-century physicist who researched the visualisation of sound waves. He discovered that fine sand on a square metal plate formed geometrical patterns when a violin bow was vibrated across the edge of the plate. Derges made these images in a similar fashion, but with carborundum powder on photographic paper to produce photograms.

'River Taw (Ice), 4 February 1997'

Susan Derges, 'River Taw (Ice), gelatin-silver print photogram by Susan Derges, 4 February 1997', 1997. Collection of the artist.

'Vessel No.3 (1)'

For this series Derges used a toadspawn-filled jam jar as a three-dimensionaltransparency. She placed the jar above an enlarging lens in the darkroom and used flashlight to make an exposure. The first image shows loops of well-ordered spawn, while the final one shows an empty jar from which we presume the last toad has just hopped into adulthood.

'Vessel No.3 (9)'

For this series Derges used a toadspawn-filled jam jar as a three-dimensional transparency. She placed the jar above an enlarging lens in the darkroom and used flashlight to make an exposure. The first image shows loops of well-ordered spawn, while the final one shows an empty jar from which we presume the last toad has just hopped into adulthood.

'Eden 5'

This work was made as part of a residency at the Eden Project in Cornwall. It concentrates in a single image the many different wave forms that Derges has examined over the years. Like other artists and philosophers, she is exploring the idea that natural patterns are the signs of deeply hidden affinities, visible signs that point to the invisible.

'Arch 4 (summer)'

'Working directly, without the camera,' says Derges, 'with just paper, subject matter and light, offers an opportunity to bridge the divide between self and other'.

In these dreamlike landscapes, she first made images of cloud by direct digital scans of ink dispersing in water within a small glass tank. She printed these scans onto large transparencies, then placed them beneath a glass tank containing water, bracken, grasses and reeds. Next she made direct prints onto dye destruction paper placed beneath both tank and transparency. Finally, she photographed these prints and digitally stitched them together to make the large-scale digital C-prints.

'Invocation'

To make this piece, a mother briefly placed her child on a sheet of photographic paper that had been submerged in a tray of shallow water. A flashlight, fired directly at the paper, captured the child's outline as well as ripples in the water. The image is a kind of baptism, but its title, Invocation, suggests an earnest appeal or prayer.

From the series 'My Ghost' (Butterfly Daguerreotype)

The butterfly is a classic symbol of the brevity of life, its flight standing for the passage of the soul. It is captured here in an obsolescent technique, that of daguerreotype. Made on silvered copper plates, daguerreotypes were invented in the 1840s and used mainly for portraiture. Here the plate has been intentionally overexposed, producing a shimmering blue

From the series 'My Ghost' 1999 (Birds in Flight)

From the series 'My Ghost' 1999 (Birds in Flight), gelatin-silver print photogram by Adam Fuss, 1999. Cheim & Read Gallery, New York

'Untitled, 2007'

Throughout the history of art, the snake has symbolised a loss of innocence, the coming of a self-reflective state or an ecstatic struggle. It is a recurring motif in Fuss's work. Using live animals in his studio, he explores the snake's many symbolic and metaphorical manifestations

From the series 'My Ghost' 1997 (Christening Dress)

'The work', says Fuss, 'is about the passage of that quality of presence, which is not physical, but is still real.' A child's christening robe appears as a shroud devoid of bodily forms. Closer inspection reveals a snake-like figure, one of Fuss's recurring emblems, woven into the fabric.

From the series 'My Ghost' 1999 (Smoke)

The images in My Ghost (1995-2001) are at once a personal story and a set of universal emblems. They express the idea of a human presence that is lost but recalled momentarily by its traces, both physical and emotional. Here a funereal column of smoke includes a spectre in vaguely human form.