1.22.10 "That's Photogramtastic."

This photographic greeting card composed by London-based photographer Dave Eva is a prime example of a photogram, an image created without a camera. Photograms can be produced by placing objects directly onto a photosensitive material (in this case photopaper) and then exposing the setup to light. A negative shadowlike image results; its tonal range is dependent on the exposure time and the level of transparency for the objects used.

It is argued that William Henry Fox Talbot produced the first photographic images using this technique; he placed leaves and pieces of material onto light sensitive material and exposed them to the light of the sun, producing white outlines which were called photogenic drawings. Made famous by artists like Man Ray (who called his images "rayographs"), photograms like Eva's can serve many purposes. In the mid 1840's botanist Anna Atkins created a book of cyanotype photograms that captured the images of botanical specimens; in modern times, photograms can capture abstract images and communicate different ideas.