Contemporary Abstract Photographers

<p>Do you have abstract photographers that you admire who are making work right now? Please post links!</p>

<p>(Yes, photo.net member links are welcome.)</p>

<p>One that I really enjoy is <a href="http://manuelgeerinck.com/index.php?/publications/photographs/">Manuel Geerinck</a>, but he's a little bit of a problem because he photographs his own (non-photographic) artwork to make his abstracts. Nevertheless, if you <a href="http://manuelgeerinck.com/index.php?/publications/photographs/">look at them</a>, I think you'll agree that they are photographs. He's just got an unfair advantage in being able to make his own source material.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.richardcaldicott.co.uk/photographs">Richard Caldicott</a> is interesting (see, for example, <a href="http://www.richardcaldicott.co.uk/photographs/1999/1">some of his work with Tupperware</a>). Also interesting is <a href="http://www.ellencareyphotography.com/photography-degree-zero/">Ellen Carey's work with Polaroids</a>. Hers is tricky because I'm trying to stick to abstracts that use cameras (i.e. not camera-less abstracts, of which there is much that I enjoy). Not sure how much of Carey's fits that bill.</p>

<p>Finally, just to mention the obvious, <a href="http://barbarakasten.net/">Barbara Kasten</a> has been and is still doing, tons of abstract work that is well-known and well-loved. I'm not a big fan, but she is surely abstract and surely very good at what she does.</p>

in my view all photos are abstract, so here's one of mine<div></div>

<p>"That one may see for miles into a bit of paper no bigger than one's hand is, of necessity, a perpetual wonder" — The Photographer's Annual 1891</p>

<p>Oh, wait. Wrong thread. That quote is from my Landscape book ...</p>

<p>[norman , on the other hand, the dust-on-your-sensor smudge, middle left side ... Now <em>that's</em> abstract. Add more (maybe on the upper right?) and we're really cooking.]</p>

harrumph. it's a smudge on the glass through which i made the abstraction, if you don't mind. but thanks for noticing.

<p>"it's a smudge on the glass"</p>

<p>No, no <em>no</em>, norman. Sheesh, what kind of abstractionist are you?</p>

<p>It's your questing deep inner soul ("questing" gives us the profound image title "???").</p>

<p>Or, no, I think maybe it's norman's inner fart aimed in my general direction. The ??? is its search for the target of its deepest desires: abstract poseurs everywhere. No? Okay, I'll keep trying.</p>

<p>Abstract poseurs? Thanks for the invitation!</p><div></div>

<p>*<em>throwing up my hands in disgust</em>*</p>

<p>For Pete's sake, William. The first rule of being a poseur is that you must deny that you're a poseur. (Nice photo!)</p>

<p>First norman doesn't know how to properly blow hot air. Now William can't even pose properly. I have to tell you guys <em>every</em>thing.</p>

<i>Or, no, I think maybe it's norman's inner fart aimed in my general direction</i>

<p>

grow up, ffs. if you can't handle alternative definitions of abstract photographs to your own maybe you should be more

specific.<div></div>

<p>But, Julie, my wife already tells me everything...</p>

<p>Good lord. I am William's wife!</p>

<p>This really messes up my day. William will want lunch. </p>

<p>To come back to Julie's contemporary abstract photography, I have been looking around in my files to find contemporary photographers in the field I follow:<br>

I'm especially attracted by abstracts related to life in cities and contemporary building. The decomposition of the visual view permits sometimes to catch the essence of city life, how our inner self lives it (without provoking a philosophical debate, I hope). Many contemporary photographers work on this theme, which is surely different from the abstract constructions you refer to with photos of photographers like Richard Caldecott (I love his Installation view, Sous les Eatables Gallery, 2015).<br>

Look at <strong>Mike Lee</strong> and his urban abstract photos like this one from his <a href="https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Photography-March-2013-Wall/766642/2349822/view">Wall series</a> or another from the <a href="https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Photography-Wall-4/766642/2349782/view">same series</a>, Danille van Hilten's "<a href="https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Photography-SMCS3/312837/1531851/view">SMCS3</a>", or Mica Hubertus Mick's <a href="https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Photography-Cityscape-Futuristic/350855/191142/view">Cityscapes futuristic</a>. <br>

But you can of course also go inside city buildings and the same visual wealth is available to the photographer like the one below.</p>

<div></div>

<blockquote>

<p>grow up, ffs. if you can't handle alternative definitions of abstract photographs to your own maybe you should be more specific.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>This is a quote from Ellen Carey's Polaroid work Julie linked to in her OP that I find is a perfect definition of abstract photography that IMO can apply to any other visual format for communicating abstracts in general...</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Questions frequently asked about my work include, ”How is this picture made?” followed by “What is this a picture of?” The first question addresses photography as process. <strong>The photographic object often involves an intersection of process and invention, as does the practice of photography itself.</strong> In traditional photography, both the process and the invention are “transparent”, mere means to an end. In my work the process becomes the subject. The second question addresses the conundrum of a photographic image without a picture or a “sign” to read. These two questions challenge our cultural and historically prescribed expectations for this medium to narrate and document, all the while revealing no trace of its own origins.</p>

<p>http://www.ellencareyphotography.com/photography-degree-zero/</p>

</blockquote>

<p>What was the process and invention used in your sailboat seascape that was not transparent (a process clearly seen by the viewer) and not used as an obvious means to an end to merely narrate and document, norman? I see your image documenting a seascape. That's not an abstract.</p>

<p>An abstract version would be to apply some type of photoshop filter that would turn the detailed elements into a simplified graphic or bizarre texture or to make a copy of the image, flip it in reverse on a photoshop layer and go to town on the blending modes, maybe even "invert" (make it a negative). That would clearly indicate process and invention you came up with in your own mind to turn a seascape into an abstract.</p>

<p>Abstracts tell more about the photographer in how they think about process and invention made obvious in how they manipulate or point the lens at anything that makes the image not just a documentation of a real object or scene.</p>

<p>Thanks, Julie, for those links. I wish I could come up with favorite or known abstract photographers but as I've said before I don't know what to look for nor do I have the motivation. I would have to go on a long online search I know I'll be saying to myself..."Next, next, next, no...not that one". There's just too many to cull through. With your links you've provided I trust your eyes and instinct to speak for me. Good choices, BTW.</p>

<p>Thank you Tim. I'll probably have more to say to your post later. (You caught me as I am typing my response to Anders and getting links for the below).</p>

<p>Anders your posted picture, which I like -- the coloring with the mood -- seems more abstract than any of those you linked to.</p>

<p>Are you familiar with Roland Fischer's architectural abstracts? His <a href="http://www.rolandfischer.com/facades/"><em>Façade</em> series</a> or his <a href="http://www.rolandfischer.com/new-architectures/"><em>New Architecture</em> series</a>? Click through the series to find some that are more abstract (some are less).</p>

<p>Ander's submission is a perfect example of the wandering eye's effect on showing process and invention which can be conveyed through cropping and composing as well as with post processing to make the viewer not see it as just a picture of an architectural structure. He's added or maybe brought out the ambience, mood and mystery provided by the lighting of the structure with what I'm assuming is his adding the yellow and black tones to sort of look like a graphic of a real object. </p>

<p>Now the one below that I took of an antique ceramic saucer that reflects these intense colors when only tilted toward the light at certain angles even challenges and possibly contradicts the Ellen Carey quote on what defines an abstract photo. </p>

<p>The process is invisible because I shot Raw and brought out the colors in post which is not made evident unless I tell it. Part of the process was my wandering eye noticing the reflecting color and zooming in to form a cropped composition to obscure or downplay the fact that it's an antique saucer. I'ld say the invention part was the post processing. The unedited version looks flat, dull and gray.</p>

<p>Maybe Julie and others can correct me on how I fit this into the definition of an abstract photo.</p>

<p> </p><div></div>

<p>Easily abstract, Tim.</p>

<p>But it seems undecided about what it wants to do: the lines and shapes seem out of synch with the colors. This feels like a "feeling it out" kind of picture: you know something's there and your circling to flush it out. It's got to come from you, so it's you you're circling. :)</p>

<p>Oh, common Tim, yer saucer is a close up of norman's flying one (left side of the photo). :>)</p>

<p>Thanks Julie for those links....I do enjoy abstracts and occasionally (certainly not enough) put some effort to come up with a pic or two. Yet, I've noticed that many photographers tend to <em>re-do</em> the same subject over and over (as if singing artist doing similar musical variation) vs finding something that's unrelated and truely unique. Only found one shot (v. cool) that Barbara Kasten did, but it's v. unique and the exposure is also spot on.</p>

<p>Have leaves to rake....</p>

<p>Les</p>

<p>Julie, I'm still puzzling & pondering on your point about a photo deciding on what it want's to do. I thought a photo only needs to communicate something or maybe just say "Here I am! Aren't I interesting?".</p>

<p>Or are you personifying the photo as a connection to the personality of the photographer where it can be difficult to make the connection other than detecting some attitude or POV?</p>

<p>Every time you make that point about a photo, Julie, it immediately makes sense, then I go, wait...what?...uh, now what does that mean?</p>

<p>Julie, no, I did not know Roland Fischer's abstracts. His 3/20 is wonderful, just to put up on a wall ! Thanks.<br>

Julie I will come back later concerning your comment on the city abstracts I linked to, which you found "less abstract". I'm not sure I agree.</p>

 

<p>Tim, thanks for your comments. The abstract, you uploaded of the saucer, which is not ! I find interesting , especially after you have explained what it is, and how you ended up with the span of colors, but, in my eyes, it is lacking something. For me it looks like so many microscope shots, where you feel the astonishment of the variety of forms and colors in the smallest things, but I lack a compositional element, that could make it into an "abstract photography". Just a thought ! What is in fact the role of composition in abstract photography ?</p>

<p>Your "Here I am! Aren't I interesting?" might be right for some living life as human selfy-ists, but I think most serious artists (if I can use the term without a long ping-pong reaction), are in general less extrovert and pursue a largely solitary path of self-expression and creative adventures - which sometimes, rather exceptionally, include showing the work to others to sell and eventually get comments and suggestion on how viewers experience the works. </p>

<p>I think Anders is making a good point: that if you are just seeing an interesting macro shot, then it's just an interesting macro shot. But if you're seeing line and pattern and those lines and patterns are expressive of ideas or feelings, then it's an abstract.</p>

<p>Though I'm not sure how Anders would know which it was if Tim hadn't told him.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>What is in fact the role of composition in abstract photography?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>As I understand it is to obscure, change, distort perceptions of what is being presented in order to make it not a documentation or narrative of an object or scene. That's why I said in another Abstract forum that macro shots, depending on subject and how close one gets, can force a type of crop on reality to create the Abstract style or effect. That is what I did with the saucer.</p>

<p>Like Julie indicated my explanation of the background of this shot turned it into an documentation of an object (no longer an abstract) and changed your perception or feeling about it. For me when I saw this light shimmering color effect in the saucer I saw it as no different than what I can do in Photoshop with a synthetically made graphic and overlaid canned textures. Would that still be considered an abstract photo since it's made up whole cloth in an image processor?</p>

<p>Would fractal geometry made patterns made in a computer be considered an abstract photo or digital abstract art? How would one know if they were not told? If a human indicated this, then process and invention by a human would be acknowledged and a connection to a human communicating to another would change what it is. A human made this using a different tool and process.</p>

<p>Maybe it should be said that if one talks about "contemporary art" fractals are with us and mos,t which is made by fractal artist is abstract. It is certainly not photography. No camera has been involved. Personally I'm yet to see something in fractal arts which interest me, but that is just me. I like the human touch with its imperfections.<br>

But, coming back to Tim's saucer, which is not a saucer, I did actually also look at the image before reading the text, and had the feeling that the image was lacking feet to walk on so to speak. Composition matters, also in abstract and maybe especially in abstract.</p>

<p>A picture *is* a composition. A (visual) composition *is* a picture. They are the same thing.</p>

<p>If I pretend I don't know what Tim has told me and I just look at his picture, I wouldn't say that it's not an abstract (though I think my previous "it seems undecided about what it wants to do" is pretty much the same criticism that Anders is making). That my eye is made interested in 'players' -- the fragmented, poppy colors, the strong, crusty arc on the left, and most of all the complicated, noisy discussion of the dance of lines on the right -- makes me say that this is an abstract, but a so far unfocused one. The players are in the same room, but they're not talking to each other.</p>

<p>A story. This is from Rudolf Arnheim's Introduction to the new version of his <em>Art and Visual Perception: A Psychcology of the Creative Eye</em>:</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>... I have tried to spare the reader a hangover caused by reading many things that serve no good purpose. One of my reasons for writing this book is that I believe many people to be tired of the dazzling obscurity of arty talk, the juggling with catchwords and dehydrated aesthetic concepts, the pseudoscientific window dressing, the impertinent hunt for clinical symptoms, the elaborate measurement of trifles, and the charming epigrams. Art is the most concrete thing in the world, and there is no justification for confusing the mind of anybody who wants to know more about it."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>.</p>

<p>Sounds good, right? But read on:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>... "Recently, a young instructor at Dartmouth College exhibited an assemblage which, I am pleased to report, was called <em>Homage to Arnheim</em>. It consisted of ten identical mousetraps, arranged in a row. At the spot where the bait was to be affixed, he had written the titles of this book's ten chapters, one on each contraption."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>.</p>

<p>I don't think any of us can miss the meaning of the mousetraps, even though a mousetrap has nothing to do with chapters in an art book. Just so, abstract art carries that method further and gives us compositional dynamics that we may immediately understand feelings and thoughts at the core of some felt idea.</p>

<p>Yes surely, Julie, a picture is a composition, like a painting is made of paint. But does not bring us much forward. When I write that, for me, the abstract of Tim above lack of composition a lack of composition I actually wrote: that the picture is "lacking feet to walk on, so to speak. Composition matters, also in abstract and maybe especially in abstract". So it is not a question on composition or not but a question of a composition, that serves the picture. This is mostly intentionally chosen by the photographer, but can be unintentional too of course. <br>

How does Tim see it ?</p>

<blockquote>

<p>So it is not a question on composition or not but a question of a composition, that serves the picture.</p>

</blockquote>

 

<blockquote>

<p>That my eye is made interested in 'players' -- the fragmented, poppy colors, the strong, crusty arc on the left, and most of all the complicated, noisy discussion of the dance of lines on the right -- makes me say that this is an abstract, but a so far unfocused one. The players are in the same room, but they're not talking to each other.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Examining both Julie's and Ander's description of my saucer abstract actually made me rethink how I could've said something more changing the composition by pulling back the lens and showing more of the "dancing" lines which is friction lines from years of unglazed ceramic bottom cups scraping the glaze off to more appear like free form brush strokes similar to Japanese calligraphy.</p>

<p>Why can't an abstract that appears to have "elements that don't talk to each other" just come across as a celebration of image language styles? Or to put it in layman's terms..."It just looks cool" similar to Ellen Carey's Polaroid color smears. What elements are talking to each other in those abstracts?</p>