Photogram

Photographic prints made by laying objects onto photographic paper and exposing it to light

Photography refers to the process or practice of creating a photograph – an image produced by the action of light on a light-sensitive material

As applied to art, avant-garde means art that is innovatory, introducing or exploring new forms or subject matter

The photogram is an image made without a camera by placing an object directly on to the surface of a light-sensitive material and then exposing it to light. Since the dawn of photography it has been explored by practitioners such as Anna Atkins and Henry Fox Talbot, keen to expand the boundaries of representation. It was a technique much employed by early modernists such as László Moholy-Nagy and György Kepes (the latter’s photograms go on display at Tate Liverpool this spring) and is enjoying something of a revival as seen in the works of Liz Deschenes, Nathaniel Mellors, Walead Beshty and Raphael Hefti

Before he became famous for his protean work, Robert Rauschenberg was making little-known but beautiful cameraless photograms with his then wife Susan Weil

We know her best through her sculptures, but one of the many outcomes of Barbara Hepworth's friendship with László Moholy-Nagy was her experiments with photograms. The artist's granddaughter reveals how they came about