Contemporary Art
Schwartz Art Collection
Schwartz Art Collection
Lisa Oppenheim
(American, born 1975)
Lunagrams (VI), 1851/2010
Lisa Oppenheim, Lunagrams (VI), 1851/2010, unique silver toned photogram. 20 x 16 in., Schwartz Art Collection, Harvard Business School © Lisa Oppenheim
Oppenheim creates her Lunagrams by making large-format photographic negatives from glass-plate negatives of photographs of the moon taken by NYU chemistry professor John Draper and his son Henry in 1851. Christian Rattemeyer has described her process: “Exposing the paper to the light of the moon at the time of the lunar phase depicted in the original glass-plate, she creates a photogram of the moon by the moon, a self-image where the moon shows and makes itself as and through its particular characteristics of each lunar phase.”