Dada vs Photogram
ダダ / フォトグラム
Dada comes from Avant-garde and Photogram from Photographic Techniques. One is style and the other technique. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Dada
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Deliberately dislocates meaning and order, making authority itself the material of the joke.
Photogram
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No camera is involved. Objects laid on the sensitive surface and exposed to light turn contour, transparency and distance into the picture.
| Dada | Photogram | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1916–1920s | 1830s– / avant-garde revival |
| Family | Avant-garde | Photographic Techniques |
| Kind | Style | Technique |
| Cues | Rotated type / Fragments of sound / Collisions of scale / Unbalanced margins | Cameraless / Object contours / Reversed values / Contact and distance |
| Best used for | Cultural events and statements that doubt common sense · Making voice, noise and collision come before meaning | Recording small objects of differing transparency by contour and tone alone · Work that shows the experiment with light itself, without a camera |
| Type | Collide weights, directions and cases in one plane | For letters, lay cut stencils on the paper and leave them reversed |
| Composition | Keep one reading path; rotate and sever the rest | Treat the sheet edge as the frame and choose contact or a gap |
| Material | Letterpress black, red, off-white; bind the accidents with repetition | Photo paper, lamp height, exposure time, distance controlling edge hardness |
| Caution | Not decorative messiness. Decide which authority or custom you are objecting to. | This is not black and white abstraction in general. Merely arranging unusual objects records only shadows, while transparency and distance from the sensitized surface are what make the image. |