Behind changes in mediums and messages, from the photogram to the instagram

There is no progress in art, any more than there is progress in making love. There are simply different ways of doing it.

— Man Ray, 1948 essay

Man Ray was an influential modernist artist with a famously private streak behind a wild creative sensibility.

Among many things, he was known for his “rayographs,” more generally known as photograms, or photographic images made by putting objects on photographic paper and exposing them to light without a camera.

When I think of the word photogram, the key isn’t the “photo”, but the “-gram”, a phrase that refers to ”something written, drawn, or plotted,” often as a symbol or series of symbols with a meaning behind it.

But the photogram is far from the most popular -gram. Telegram, cablegram, sonogram, diagram, cardiogram, ideogram, and infogram, for example, are examples of artifacts carrying messages created and transmitted by unique technologies. *

Which leads us to Instagram. What’s behind the name?

When we were kids we loved playing around with cameras — we loved how all the old Polaroid cameras marketed themselves as “instant” (something we take for granted today). We also felt that the snapshots people were taking were kind of like telegrams in that they got sent over the wire to others — so we figured why not combine the two?

Pretty cool story. Replace tele- with insta-, and done! But the more important part to the story is that they kept the -gram. They changed the technology, but carried over the core communication function.

And that’s an important reminder. While the key to the success of the medium of Instagram and today’s popular photography comes from the insta-, the future of the medium lies in the -gram. Whatever changes in the technology behind photography, videography, or any form of creative art, the message will always be the most important part. **