Composition #86

Name: Ragnar Digital, LLC
Price range: $

Marcel Schwittlick

2023

Oscilloscope/Light Photo

Luminogram
Black ink on Fabriano Bristol; 42 × 59.4 cm (A2); edition of 8 variants, each unique.

Description

A luminogram is a photographic technique first pioneered by László Moholy-Nagy in 1922. It’s similar to photogram, but instead of placing objects on light-sensitive paper in order to create marks from shadows, the artist composes directly on photopaper using light of varying duration and intensity. Schwittlick, an expert at using plotters to turn code into works on paper, devised a way for a plotter to move a laser pointer rather than the traditional stylus. The photopaper exposed this way then proceeds through a normal darkroom process. The result is a series of eerie, gray abstractions comprising rigid sets of lines with varying degrees of blur. The ends and corners of these lines feature small tufts of extra darkness, where light accumulated in the moments before the plotter arm began to move.