The following paper centers on August Strindberg’s photograms of the 1890’s and their relation to an attributed capacity of photography – its apparent ability to capture a picture automatically, without human interference – and the nineteenth century conceptualization of photographic objectivity which followed from this attribution.
Strindberg’s notions of nature and chance play a crucial role in this relationship and are related to the way in which the photogram can be seen as a medium located between science and art. At the same time, this paper considers the connection between technical innovations like photography and concepts of sensory perception and the extent to which photography shaped the possibilities and limitations attributed to the human senses. In the case of the picture-producing technique “photogram”, an aspect of 19 th century photography, the technology revealed hidden or unseen phenomena in the world and was therefore regarded as a kind of substitute to human vision. I argue that the photogram, as a cameraless and lensless variation of photography, had a formative role in the conceptualisation of photography, which thereafter stuck with terms such as “contact”, “impression” or “trace” for describing the referential status in photography theory.
The photogram’s tactile qualities gave it a central role in the science and parascience of the nineteenth century, shaping the so-called medium-specificity of the photogram as an artistic principle.
