Are photos capable of abstraction?

[q.g._de_bakker]

And still people believe that photos (or anything else) are capable of being 'acurate', can convey 'objective fact' (what would that be? Is it something like the 'real truth'?).

[q.g._de_bakker]

How clever, Lutmilja.

[je ne regrette rien]

Gratifying doesn't have to entail agreement.

 

Connection doesn't have to entail agreement either..

 

Absolutely correct. It is not about pleasing the audience, in no way. But it’s about getting the message through. If I speak and am not understood, it may be me who does not express myself properly or my audience, who does not have the knowledge and means to understand what I say.

 

While I shall put the latter in perspective, I need to take care of the former.

 

I am always recalling Michael Stipe formerly of R.E.M. who in an interview rejected any explanation of one of their songs (me Marlon Brando, Marlon Brando and I)

 

And @inoneeye, and you, are absolutely right. Listening to the audience’s reactions needs to consider what’s between the lines.

[je ne regrette rien]

Let's go bang back to earth.

No, Allen, it is not about photographs and reality.

 

It is about how photographs convey abstract messages. And definitely reality can be both concrete and abstract, as the unreal may be concrete and abstract as well.

[je ne regrette rien]

Aaah-------What is "Real" , and what is "Not Real" , that is the question.

(Sorry Willie).

Sorry, it is not about real and unreal.

 

Abstraction can be extremely real.

[samstevens]

it may be me who does not express myself properly or my audience, who does not have the knowledge and means to understand what I say.

There may be a third possibility.

 

Personal and expressive photos may be delving into new vocabularies as they are being made, even as they’re also utilizing existing visual grammars. Not only may a photo of this sort not be fully understood by the viewer. It may not be fully understood by the photographer who’s reaching beyond what he already knows or has relied on.

 

Connecting to an audience and building understanding is as much a process as something that happens in an instant.

 

It may not be so much a matter of expressing oneself properly so as to achieve understanding as it is being able to both offer and elicit empathy in an exploration.

Edited February 12, 2022 by samstevens

[je ne regrette rien]

Personal and expressive photos may be delving into new vocabularies as they are being made, even as they’re also utilizing existing visual grammars. Not only may a photo of this sort not be fully understood by the viewer. It may not be fully understood by the photographer who’s reaching beyond what he already knows or has relied on.

 

Connecting to an audience and building understanding is as much a process as something that happens in an instant.

 

It may not be so much a matter of expressing oneself properly so as to achieve understanding as it is being able to both offer and elicit empathy in an exploration.

 

Precisely.

 

Look at this thread. It may provide a perfect metaphor for the presentation of, and reactions to, a set of photographs. Some have said that the conversation is "way above my head". Others have brought in concepts like "reality vs. irreality", "reality vs. art", "photography and art", etc. It is not that these themes are not relevant or important. It's just that my topic is a very specific one.

 

If one wants to discuss whether a photograph can be abstract, they are free to open another thread and I'm sure you and I will be more than happy to contribute.

 

As I am presenting here a specific line of thinking, which needed some refinements on the way but that some have perfectly understood, and reacted to, exactly the same may happen with my set of photographs.

 

The first difference is that images are much less malleable than words. The second one is that we are debating a conceptual topic here, a specific idea, a specific angle of view on photography, while with photographs the topic needs to be visual to begin with.

[je ne regrette rien]

It’s also very trivial. Look your opening statement and ask yourself what can a photo be all the time?

It is not, not at all.

 

It's not about finding the ultimate classification (which would be impossible to achieve), but identifying those elements and instruments that make photos produce an abstract message to be combined in a flexible way).

 

I'm not looking at photos, I'm focusing on the process to make these photos and combine them.

[Supriyo]

I agree with Ludmilla, the question as placed, sounded trivial. Obviously, photos can do both, real life depiction of a scene / subject, or using a scene to represent a message or a reflection. Even more, the same photo can serve both purposes, depending on the viewer.

 

You have been trying to clarify what you meant when someone is misunderstanding the question. Instead, it may have been better to expand a bit on the original question in the OP itself (perhaps with some examples), so that people are on the same page.

 

it was also not clear whether you were referring to one photo at a time, or a combination of multiple photos. Now, reading the latest comments, looks like, it’s multiple photos.

[Supriyo]

It's a complex issue. Of course we all, and I, want to have some gratifying feedback on the photographs we produce. That said, and going beyond the mere aspect of gratification, my purpose is to try and succeed in establishing a connection between myself and the viewer by means of a set of photographs. You will know that it is not comparable at with "likes" that are currently hunted on social media.

 

This connection is carried by the visual message I want to construct and convey and here the issue of visual language, abstraction and reality kicks in. I am engaged in learning how to use the photos in a series to obtain a certain syntax and a certain meaning, reasonably clear to myself first of all.

 

And then I can deal with the beholders and the hard fact that "one sees what one knows" and propose to my sincere visual message convincingly.

 

To do this, and that is why I muse about abstraction - among other issues - I need to find a way to build my multi-layered perception of reality in my picture. The only way to do it is to identify, compose and present those elements, which represent these layers, in the photographs I put together.

 

PS I find it almost impossible to succeed in this unless I have a prior concept and idea I am pursuing when making the pictures.

 

I honestly feel, the best way to prep one’s mind for connection with the viewer (it’s more a mutual resonance than a one way thing, deciphering a photo like a puzzle piece is not my thing) is to look at other artists’ works, a lot of them, and trying to feel what you get out of them (doesn’t matter to me whether my feelings match with that of the artist or not, as long as I don’t draw a blank by looking at an image). That kind of exercise helps in place of analytically deconstructing images into elements or cues.

 

I think, artists (and photographers who are artists) create out of an urge to express, connection with viewers is secondary to many of them. When I read artists’ biographies, it appears to me that many of them are trying to rediscover themselves through their work all their lives. What viewers can take from their work is this journey to rediscover oneself.

[samstevens]

it may be me who does not express myself properly

Then you must phrase your question appropriately.

the question as placed, sounded trivial

I've noticed that a lot of the thread has been spent reformulating and reworking the question. That's not unusual for philosophical discussions. Getting the question straight and understanding what's at stake is usually a good beginning toward intelligent progress. Kudos to all of us for spending time on that and being productive with our ideas in doing so.

Look at this thread. It may provide a perfect metaphor for the presentation of, and reactions to, a set of photographs.

It may provide a metaphor, but it's not perfect.

 

Sure, communicating via words is like communicating via pictures. But I suggest continuing ... communicating via words is also unlike communicating via pictures. I suspect it's somewhere in the combination and tension between their likeness and unlikeness that some keys will be found.

 

Though understanding in a dialogue may not often or ever be 100%, I'd expect it to be more exacting than what takes place in communicating with photos, which is a looser experience often filled with ambiguity by nature or design or both.

 

While it seems human to want to understand the question and focus the answers accordingly in a philosophy discussion, and a lot of refining of meaning and zeroing in on specifics will take place, that doesn't seem to me the key to the way photography or art works, even though elements of that type of process may be at play.

 

I want to be left wondering when viewing a photo. I want there to be an open end with many types of intriguing photos. In this discussion, many of us may be satisfied that we understand the OP when we can zero in on the question and narrow it down to its most understandable form.

 

On the other hand, I want a photo or series of photos to keep opening up, keep surprising me. Even a conceptual work or series, I think, is not mainly about understanding.

 

WIth photos, I'm happy to be brought along for the ride without necessarily being handed a road map.

Edited February 12, 2022 by samstevens

[je ne regrette rien]

I refer to the single photo or to the series not because they are the same, but in that they try to convey a certain message. As far as I'm concerned, I'm interested in the message, how it is formulated is up to the author, who has the responsibility to make all decisions and bear the consequences.

 

What I personally think is that since photos (one or many linked is not important as long as the message is composed) are oftentimes quite literal, it is very difficult to use them to formulate abstract and possibly multi-layered concepts. I'm not saying that it's impossible, just that it is very hard.

 

Following @Supriyo's suggestion, I provide an example. With this photo I wanted to express *Decay and Magnificence*. Does it come through?

 

[Supriyo]

It does show decay and magnificence, but it also shows a lot of other things, such as water and ambience. It may also evoke a sense of nostalgia, e.g. for someone who spent time outdoors. I am saying, nothing wrong if someone doesn't get decay and magnificence, and rather get something else from the photo.

 

My personal opinion, the two elements that convey decay and magnificence in this picture are spatially and conceptually a bit far apart (one is a large architecture, other is a small construction), therefore the message could become ambiguous. To contrast between decay and magnificence, one may choose to show two architectural subjects close to one another, of similar scale, just that one is pristine and grand, the other being in a state of decay.

Edited February 12, 2022 by Supriyo

[je ne regrette rien]

In the foreground there is an abandoned wreck (decay) from a previous flood.

In the background you see the Basilica of St. Peter, the most important church of the Holy See and the Vatican State and one of the largest and tallest in the world (magnificence).

Physical and unmodifiable elements are

• the river between them;
  
• the distance between them;
  
• the banks and trees along the river that guide the eye towards the rather small background.
  

A painter could have portrayed them closer one to the other, reduce the prominence of the river, increase the size and visibility of the wreck, moved the perspective more to the right, disregarding the potentiality of wet feet (and more). I could have used a longer lens, reducing the width, but would have lost parts of the wreck in the foreground. But the literal characteristic of the picture would have remained more or less the same.

 

I could have chosen another picture, if I could have found one, but it would have been a completely different one.

Edited February 12, 2022 by je ne regrette rien

[samstevens]

Physical and unmodifiable elements are

part of the nature of photos.

 

So, often, what we express with photos is dependent on limitations the "real world" provides. Those limitations are what makes us human and what makes photography a challenge.

 

Regardless of the immutability of the elements and their positioning in this photo, Supriyo's response stands as genuine. The reasons a photographer had to make a certain picture a certain way rarely (though sometimes) will change what it winds up expressing.

 

I don't think Supriyo was suggesting that this picture could be changed to become more effective at conveying your message. I think he was simply addressing its effectiveness at doing so as is.

 

My reaction to the photo is one of a degree of expansiveness and being led to a point. It's also one of contrast. While I think St. Peter's is a magnificent structure, "magnificence" isn't the first word that would come to mind when seeing this particular portrayal of it. Beckoning, isolated, lonely all come to mind long before magnificence.

 

To get one photo to express to a viewer a specific concept is like taking a sentence out of a paragraph and seeing if I understand it fully. I doubt I would.

 

Can you explain how you feel abstraction comes into this? This seems a pretty literal approach to the concept you're conveying. Your concept is decay and magnificence and you're literally showing something decaying and something magnificent. Nothing wrong with that and it's a photo with grace and merit, but what role is abstractness playing.

 

For me, the abstract elements are the shadows and textures, the lighting, the depth, the curve of the river bank and of the trees against the sky. Those abstractions provide an atmosphere or mood, not a sense of decay or magnificence. When I think of magnificence, for example, I think perspective would be one abstract element that would help convey it. Magnificence is, in a sense, often larger than life.

[Allen Herbert]

"Let's go bang back to earth" Allen

 

"No, Allen, it is not about photographs and reality" je

 

Okay, from your example it's about a photo depicting two realities in tandem.: you call this abstract. Lots of words to get there, when a photo would have spoken volumes for you. I cannot help but think, that folks conceive a photo as the poor cousin of prose. And the poor cousin, need lots of words to help them with their disability.

 

Hmm.

[inoneeye]

With this photo I wanted to express [....]

*Decay and Magnificence*

Very specific take from your viewing.?

idk if the words came first or if the scene suggested the thought or if you saw the image and then you expressed your impression, interpretation.

Anywhere along the process from conception to presentation you have options available.

Obvious & Simplified; At the scene you have camera settings and perspective. Scale, angles, lighting, focus, lens, etc

When you the creator see the image you as viewer can choose to express and bolster your response. You then have the option to use pp to enhance and refine with a goal. That part of the craft is equally important when you are trying to communicate and support your thoughts before and/or after the capture. You can guide if you choose or you can open doors for the viewer to wander less focused on your read of the image.

IMO The how is probably best expressed, discussed elsewhere. Nuts and bolts.

Edited February 12, 2022 by inoneeye

[Allen Herbert]

Just out of interest....

 

Famous Abstract Photographers - Bing images

 

Your photo worked for me ,however, in the world of abstract? A bit bread and butter methinks.

Edited February 12, 2022 by Allen Herbert

[q.g._de_bakker]

There is a serious confusion present here of 'abstract' with 'symbol(ic).

[inoneeye]

Several times during his discussion Minor White has come to my mind. He also created good abstracts. But that is not why i thought of him.

 

"In his article, Equivalence;

Minor White referred to 'Equivalence,' a term he took from his predecessor Stieglitz. According to White,

the Equivalence connects the photograph to the psyche of the viewer by means of recognition. :

 

"When a photograph functions as an Equivalent we can say that at that moment, and for that person the photograph acts as a symbol or plays the role of a metaphor for something that is beyond the subject photographed."

 

"One does not photograph something simply for 'what it is', but 'for what else it is.

...all photographs are selfportraits."

 

"Photography is a language more universal than words."

 

"To see through, not merely with, the eye, to perceive with the inner eye, and by an act of choice to capture the essence of that perception. This is the very core of the creative process."

Edited February 12, 2022 by inoneeye

[inoneeye]

^t "his discussion"

[inoneeye]

Which is why you'll never get viewers to utter just the "right" words you may have in mind when making or presenting a photo.

With that in mind if I were asked to ponder this photograph and find words for where it takes me.... I would simply say life moves on. inspired by the river. And opening alternative possibilities in post processing.

[samstevens]

"Photography is a language more universal than words."

Which is why you'll never get viewers to utter just the "right" words you may have in mind when making or presenting a photo. The words a viewer uses are likely going to be inadequate and not necessarily cover the range of response and relationship to the photo. And the visual language a photographer is using can certainly be aided by words and described with words, but the words won't give the whole story, so there is no one-to-one correspondence between concepts understood/described and pictures presented.

"One does not photograph something simply for 'what it is', but 'for what else it is.

Transcendence plays a key role in art and photography, where so many things are what they are and also are not what they are and are what they are not.

[je ne regrette rien]

So, often, what we express with photos is dependent on limitations the "real world" provides. Those limitations are what makes us human and what makes photography a challenge.

Possibly what I wanted to get to with my original question.

[je ne regrette rien]

*Decay and Magnificence*

Very specific take from your viewing.?

idk if the words came first or if the scene suggested the thought or if you saw the image and then you expressed your impression, interpretation.

First came the eyes and the impression and then the photograph. Technically, I would do some things differently now, but the picture would not be significantly different.