Heinrich Heidersberger: Light Harmonies. The Rhythmograms

Between the 1950s and 1960s, Heinrich Heidersberger made photographs without a camera. His rhythmograms were drawn by light itself: a single ray, set in motion by a room-sized mechanical apparatus the artist built to his own design, traced the geometry of waves and oscillations onto a photographic plate. What results are compositions of pure luminosity, curling into shapes that read now as abstract figures, now as organisms, now as spaces — time and motion held inside one frame.

Heidersberger (1906–2006) was widely known as a photographer of postwar modernist architecture, and the 2014 study draws attention to another part of his practice. He designed a mechanical apparatus to generate photographic images, which places these works inside photography while pushing at its conventions. Seen together, they mark a line between the experiments of early modernism and the algorithmic art and architecture that followed, and that line is what the book sets out to trace.

This is the first critical study devoted to the rhythmograms. Published by Hatje Cantz in 2014, the volume runs to 120 pages and 76 photographs in hardcover, with German and English texts. Andrew Witt edited the book and writes here alongside other contributors; Neil Donnelly is credited with its design. The apparatus is central to the account given: not a camera but an instrument contrived to register what the eye cannot hold, carrying the orbit of a single ray onto a sensitized plate.

For a collector, this is a focused record of postwar experiments in which mechanical motion and light generate the photographic image. The 1950s–60s date of the rhythmograms gives the work a specific historical position, while the critical study connects it with questions later associated with algorithmic art and architecture. The relationship between the designed apparatus, the light’s movement and the resulting curves makes the project relevant to collections concerned with camera-less photography and the construction of images.

The rhythmograms by Heinrich Heidersberger (1906–2006) are intricately curved compositions of pure light that weave abstract figures, organisms, and spaces. The artist created these complex light patterns during the fifties and sixties, capturing the invisible and elusive worlds of time and motion in a single frame. He drew the rhythmograms using an enormous deconstructed photographic machine of his own design. Outfitted not with a camera but instead with an ingenious, room-sized mechanical apparatus to trace the geometry of delicate waves and oscillations, the machine reproduced the elegant orbit of a single ray of light on a photographic plate. Widely known as an architectural photographer of postwar modernism, Heidersberger’s little-known rhythmograms comprise a fascinating bridge between the work of early modernists and the future of algorithmic art and architecture. This is the first critical study of his rhythmograms in all of their delicate detail.

Edited by: Andrew Witt
Designed by: Neil Donnelly
Texts by: Andrew Witt u.a.
German, English
April 2014, 120 Pages , 76 Photos
hardcover
ISBN:978-3-7757-3774-6

Publisher page editorial text:
| Luminous rhythmograms situated somewhere between mechanical drawing and photography
The rhythmograms by Heinrich Heidersberger (1906–2006) are intricately curved compositions of pure light that weave abstract figures, organisms, and spaces. The artist created these complex light patterns during the fifties and sixties, capturing the invisible and elusive worlds of time and motion in a single frame. He drew the rhythmograms using an enormous deconstructed photographic machine of his own design. Outfitted not with a camera but instead with an ingenious, room-sized mechanical apparatus to trace the geometry of delicate waves and oscillations, the machine reproduced the elegant orbit of a single ray of light on a photographic plate. Widely known as an architectural photographer of postwar modernism, Heidersberger’s little-known rhythmograms comprise a fascinating bridge between the work of early modernists and the future of algorithmic art and architecture. This is the first critical study of his rhythmograms in all of their delicate detail.

Publisher source ↗