ABSTRACT
Many trace the origins of photograms and other camera-less photography to the experimentations with light-sensitive materials that Thomas Wedgwood, Humphrey Davy, William Henry Fox Talbot, and John Herschel, among others, conducted in the first half of the nineteenth century. The natural world, especially water, is also the subject of the camera-less photography of Susan Derges. The interplay between realism and abstraction is also central to the cyanotypes of Anna Atkins. Within art history, the term abstract is generally used to denote artworks not intended to imitate observed reality. Often these works are referred to as non-objective. In painting, moreover, abstraction frequently refers to a reduction or a taking away of subject matter so as to find the essence of the medium, like paint on canvas.
