I’ve been thinking about abstract photography; more precisely what is abstract photography?
If we boil it down to a single abstract photograph… What is an abstract photograph?
I’m really only familiar with abstract art in the form of paintings and sculptures; mainly just paintings. With an abstract painting the artist is free to express their art with no restrictions, their only limit is their skill to express their vision.
A photographer has (in my opinion) a lot more restrictions. The photographer has to point their camera at something. This is where it gets real for me, real as in reality. How does one create abstract images from reality? Maybe I’m overthinking this. It’s just that I don’t think that a close-up of tree bark or rusty steel is abstract. I think that an abstract image is supposed to be expressing a vision, the artist is “saying something”.
All that being said, most of the time (all the time) I try to create an abstract piece of art using a camera, I fail. It’s only an accident when I create something that I think resembles abstract art.
All the best,
Mike