Photograms and Lumen Prints: Photos Made With No Camera

Photo Paper That Blushes in the Sun

Lay a fern on a sheet of black-and-white photo paper, put a piece of glass over it and leave it in the sun. The paper starts turning blue, then mauve. People do this on garden tables and sunny windowsills, with no camera or developer involved. It's as old as photography: in the 1830s William Henry Fox Talbot pressed leaves onto paper he'd brushed with silver salts, and Man Ray later called his own camera-less pictures rayographs. The strange bit is the colour, since paper that's sold for grey prints comes out pink or peach in daylight.

If you've tried cyanotype printing at home, the routine will feel familiar. Arrange, press under glass, wait. The difference is that nothing gets mixed or brushed on, because the light-sensitive coating comes ready-made on the paper. A classic photogram uses that same paper with a brief burst of lamplight and a developer tray in a dark room, which gives crisp black and white. A lumen print skips the darkroom and just sits in the sun, anywhere from twenty minutes at a bright noon to a few hours on a hazy day.

Our rule here: buy almost nothing. Paper, a glass frame and a few leaves from outside will get you a real print this afternoon. Fixer's the only extra worth having, and only if you'd like to keep a print on the wall.

Everything below is priced so that fogging your first few sheets won't feel like a disaster.

A Box of Paper and Something Clear to Press It Flat

The paper is where beginners slip up first. Inkjet photo paper and darkroom photo paper look alike on a shelf, but only the darkroom kind reacts to sunlight. Unlike cyanotype, where you coat your own sheets, you're buying the chemistry already baked in, so treat the bag with respect. Open it in a dim room, slide out one sheet and close the bag again right away. Ordinary room light fogs it too. And don't expect your prints to match anyone else's: different papers give genuinely different colours, which is half the fun.

Why Your Lovely Pink Print Turned Brown in the Tray

I dropped my print in fixer and the colours drained away. Did I ruin it?

Nope. That's just what fixer does to a lumen print. Almost everyone gets caught by it once, because the colours look so settled when the sheet comes in from the sun. In the tray the pinks slide toward brown or gold and the whole image gets noticeably fainter. Scan or photograph the print before it goes anywhere near fixer, so the version you loved is saved whatever happens next.

Can I skip the fixer and just hang the print on my wall?

You can. It just won't stay the way you hung it. Unfixed paper is still light-sensitive, so it keeps darkening every time daylight reaches it. Some people frame one on purpose just to watch it change. If you want the original to last, scan it and keep it somewhere completely dark: prints stored away from light for years can still look the way they did on day one.

Is a photogram the same thing as a lumen print?

They're cousins. The names get swapped all the time, though. Both are camera-less shadow pictures made by laying objects on photo paper. A classic photogram gets a short exposure and then goes into developer, which turns the exposed areas black and leaves crisp white shapes. A lumen print gets a long spell of sun and no developer at all. So never put a sun-printed sheet into developer out of habit: it goes black almost instantly.

Can I lay one of my film negatives on the paper and print a real photo?

With black-and-white negatives, yes, and you get a soft, tinted version of a picture you already took. Colour negatives are the trap. People who've tried them, even with four-hour exposures, report that it simply doesn't work. Stick to black-and-white film for this, and save the colour negatives for the scanner.

Why did my print barely change after a whole day outside?

Check the glass first. Glass taken from an ordinary picture frame sometimes has a UV-protective coating, and that coating blocks exactly the light the paper needs. The paper matters too, since some brands and surfaces print strongly while others stay pale. If a full day doesn't give you much, swap to plain uncoated glass before you try a different paper.