Description

A figure peers through a magnifying glass at a negative of an image of Paris taken by Lissitzky in 1928. The artist’s interest in the photogram and negative images may relate to his experience of being x-rayed for tuberculosis in 1924. Later that decade, Lissitzky experimented extensively with positive and negative versions of photograms. A photogram provides a negative image of the objects placed on the sensitized paper. Using the photogram as a negative creates a positive print. Printing a mix of positive and negative images on the same sheet of paper allowed Lissitzky to add a sense of three dimensionality to the silhouettes.