Chemigrams fall under the general category of experimentation in the visual arts and are works of experimental art in which an image is created by painting with chemicals on light-sensitive paper, such as photographic paper.
Although light-sensitive paper, developer, and fixer from silver halide-based photography are needed, it is not a photograph. The chemigram is formed without the use of a camera, just like the photogram, but in broad daylight as opposed to the dimness of a darkroom. For this reason, it is not "light that writes" (photo graphein in the Greek) but rather "chemistry that writes".
Johann Schulze is credited with creating the first chemigram-like image; in 1725, he used opaque paper and a bottle of silver salts to create the artwork. During his 1839 sensitization experiments, Hippolyte Bayard created a further chemigram-like image. German Edmund Kesting and French Maurice Tabard created works by painting with developer and fixer on photographic paper in the 1930s and 1940s. However, Pierre Cordier, a Belgian artist who was born in 1933, is the one primarily responsible for creating and researching chemigrams. He was one of its few practitioners from the beginning, in 1956, and he helped it advance by enhancing its technical and aesthetic potential.
Nagy is currently working on a chemigram project in Edvard Munch's honor.
Das Kranke Madchen/The Sick Girl, a colored lithograph Munch produced on paper in 1896 (Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art), served as the inspiration for this chemigram project.
And here are some of Nagy's early chemigrams, created more than 20 years ago, in Transylvania, Romania around 2002.
