AJHingel

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<p>It is all become fairly childish, no ? Go back to "genuine abstracts" !</p><div></div>

<p>Good abstract image of overturned moss. </p>

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<p>"Inside out" doesn't really mean anything or rather it does not help us much.<br>

All creative expressions comes from "inside" the person, that is doing it.</p>

<p>I have the impression, that Julie mainly aim her sharp pen at "imitation": doing something, that looks like an abstract. My personal experience with doing and living with abstract works is that to a large degree people with no eye for abstracts, no experience about abstract art and just a meager knowledge about what abstract art is, are often only able to say: "it looks like abstract art".<br>

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Where inspiration for doing what ever is done in abstract art comes from has been discussed for ages and no simple answer exists to answer it: physical or psychological ailments, philosophical or religious questionings, intellectual and scientific theory about colours, forms and composition or political calculations (read Greenberg !) and of course, art market preferences and prices. All of it or some elements of it, are absorbed by the artist guts, brain, intellects and feelings and abstract art can sometimes be the results of it, inside out. </p>

<p>"So would this be considered a genuine abstract photo?" (Tim)<br>

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I don't know about the "genuine" but in my eyes, your image is "abstract". Abstraction is the main quality of the image as it does not pretend to present a photo of a pillar, if that is the photographed object, but offers an image of an amorphous object in three dimensions, which I see as an (abstract) sculpture. Whether I like it or not, is irrelevant.<br /></p>

<p>"IMO, for a photo to be abstract it does not have to find the same voice or utilize the same concepts or elements as abstract paintings and abstract collages" (Fred)<br>

I totally agree, it doesn't have to, but it surely also can. Abstract photography can non-figurative, but can also use figurative images, that foremost are viewed as abstract by the viewer and the artist.<br>

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Further more, "abstract photography" does not artificially have to limit itself to "something that looks like a photography". Abstract photography can find its creative sources in photography by using the camera and the digital file in post-processing, without limits, in addition to all other available media for artistic expression. Art has never benefitted from artificial restrains and dogma. Artistic expression has always broken down such barriers. <br>

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Consequently something that looks like a photography cannot be the guiding principle for what "abstract photography" is permitted to show. Photography is a tool for expression and nothing else just like the keyboard is a tool among others for written comments. </p>

<p>Fred, be ensured, no-one around is defending "uninspired imagery", but we might differ concerning our appreciation of what computer supported post-processing can deliver of fine creative photography. <br>

However, you surely touch at an important question when you start discussing "abstract" and "photography": `</p>

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<p>"If abstract is something that doesn't represent the material world, it's not necessarily something that no longer looks like"... a photograph.</p>

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<p>That surely puts us in a dilemma in relation to the restrictive definitions, that have been shared above: like reference to non-figurativity (!) as the only criteria to take into account. A definition of "what looks like a photography" will often be a photo of the "figurative" reality around us - you cannot shoot something that does not exits, but surely you can shoot something no-one else has seen before without being abstract imagery.<br>

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It leaves us however still with the question on what "abstract" means when it comes to "abstract photography". <br>

My pedagogic illustrations above do not seem to help us much. I wonder why !</p>

<p>Phil, there is not any pixelation present, it is just layer upon layer (some twenty layers) of the same image slightly displaced, with less than 50% transparencies between each. <br>

But yet again, that is not my question as you might have seen me repeating above.<br>

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If someone has another way of showing different levels of <em>liberation from any reference to reality</em>, then please show it ,so that we might advance in the exchange on what "abstract photography" is or can be. <br>

I have the feeling that our verbal exchanges do not help us much: it is not abstract; it is abstract; it is not abstract; it is; it is not; is not; is; not; ....</p>

<p>Julie, the first image i straight out of the camera and just cropped, and no computer "blurring" (just out of focus!) has been done with any of them.<br /> But again, that is not my question I try to raise, as I'm sure you have understood.<br /> The question is, when an image is sufficiently liberated from any reference to reality for it to be "abstract" even for you.</p>

<p>"I think much more of some of the other photos you posted here."<br>

Fred, My nine images above, are certainly not meant to be anything else than a series of illustration of stages from a photo of reality (No. 1) towards images which to a greater and greater extend becomes totally liberated from any reference to reality, and therfore by definition totally abstract. <br>

Whether the first or the last image or good or bad (I think they all bad apart from the first) is off-topic. <br>

At least that was my intention.<br>

I'll come back when I have read your comment in more detail.</p>

<p>As I understand our friend, Julie, the answer to me question is: "NEVER ! - it never becomes abstract "<br>

Image N° 9 is not abstract ? ? ?</p>

 

<p>With all respect, Julie, thanks !</p>

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<p>I think we need a "Algorithm forum" on Photonet :)</p>

<p>So let's try to look at a photo which slowly turns non-real, liberated from visual reality - as I see it, at least.<br /> When do you, each one of you, accept that this pictoralist photo of an antics vase in a forest in the Loire Valley becomes an ABSTRACT photography: Never ? or at stage: 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 or 9 ? Personally I see the abstract at stage 2 ! <br /> Forget about whether you like it or not !</p><div></div>

<p>Fine Glenn, I see that the changes have been made. A great thanks.<br>

As Laura, there are others with the same problem: Landscape Photography, for example</p>

<p>"your above is not abstract." (Julie)<br>

Yes I expected that you would write that concerning my "abstract" image with reeds above, and yet, it shows a something that has never existed. It is an image that "<em >rejects connections to reality" </em>and is liberated<em><strong> from the visual reality. </strong></em>Both inherent elements in definitions of "abstract in arts.<br>

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<p>"I think I'm finally starting to appreciate the logic of the "No Words" forum." (Stanford)<br>

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Yes: "The temple of our purest thoughts is silence", but it should not be forgotten that: "Silence is the ornament and safeguard of the ignorant." Finding a balance might be the most optimal.<br>

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<p>Tim, is this just reed or is it (also) something else, which I would call abstract because, in my eyes, it is beyond reality, and still you can see reed ?</p><div></div>

<p>Yes, Stella is right, scales in relation to the outside world, outside the frame, has not relevance in abstract images.Inside the frame it is another story.</p>

<p><em>"What are you talking about?"</em> (Tim)<br>

I'm simple talking about photos where the forms, structures, contrasts, colours and light becomes predominant and lift themselves beyond the image of trees which any child can see. <br>

I have a bad habit of shooting photos of the Eiffel Tower and in no case am I interested in making a photo, where the only comment to make, is: "this is the Eiffel Tower in Paris". I see it as an abstraction; a repetition of squares and triangles continuing out in an infinite perspective. But of course you can shoot photos of trees and towers, which are just that: trees and towers. If you only want to see trees and towers, that's what you get. </p>

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