civilized ku # 2403 ~ griddle / aftermath

Griddle, egg, grease ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenMany picture makers picture patterns found in nature or made by humankind and label them "abstract". However, IMO, and that of Sir Ansel ...

In a strict sense photography can never be abstract, for the camera is incapable of synthetic integration. ~ Ansel Adams

Comments

[Craig Tanner]

As I have said many times here Mark I enjoy your photography. But having said that, this post even though its very short, uses a flawed argument (a version of the straw man argument that rears its ugly head here on a somewhat regular basis) to defend your philosophy about photography.

From wikipedia here is the definition of abstract when it comes to art...

"Abstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world."

To say that you can't do this with the camera is absurd. It can be done in a many ways. For starters you could just shoot a scene so far out of focus all you are left with is circles of color. Just because some people (the nameless, faceless hoard of straw men that are set up by you here to be knocked down) mistakenly call a photograph of a readily identifiable nature pattern abstract art doesn't mean you can't abstract a scene with the camera.....it just means "those" photographers don't understand the meaning of abstract in the context of art.

You love to quote here but I don't put much weight on quotes ever in terms of knowledge or wisdom because the average person does with quotes exactly what you do in this post. They look back in time for zingers from people of social / cultural weight to support or confirm a position which they have long since chosen. Instead of leading to enlightenment the quote just ends up being jingoistic relative to whatever the opinion of the quoting author may be.

Considering Ansel's place in the lexicon of photography its hardly meaningful to quote him to make your point about abstracts. He was the father of recording literal, intricate detail. He had his mind so closed off to the idea of the abstract that he could be counted on to go to extraordinary lengths to push the abstract away. The following story was relayed in an article in the New York Times about Ansel Adams -

"Ansel Adams could be a maniac about clarity. In "Focus: Memoirs of a Life in Photography," Beaumont Newhall, the first curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art, tells a story about Adams, who was helping him with a photography exhibition at the museum. Adams was looking at one of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy's abstract photographs. "Ansel didn't like Moholy-Nagy's work at all and in particular didn't like this photograph," Newhall recalls. "He felt it was too poor a print to exhibit." So he got permission to make a clear print of it. The new print, Newhall says, "was full of details and textures not found in the original print -- but it was no longer an abstraction." Clarity obscured it."

To say that Ansel is the guy I would never go to (quotes or otherwise) to become enlightened about abstracts in art would be a fantastical understatement for all time.

Ansel is simply wrong on this one if your definition of abstract is anywhere close to the generally accepted definition of abstract when it comes to photography.... pictures which are in one way or another not readably identifiable as anything literal beyond the building blocks of composition (value, color, line, shape, texture, etc.)

Not choosing to ever shoot in an abstract way yourself or believing that the camera should be used for other things is extremely different than saying it can't be done at all.

Having said all that...keep on keeping on... In total, thanks to the photography itself, its very good stuff - debris and all....Craig