AbstractPhotography

A timeline of the appearances of Abstract Photography

We see instances of abstract photography through most of the movements. However, abstract photography is best known as a strong a reaction to World War II.

What is Abstract Photography?

“Relating to or denoting art that does not attempt to represent external realities, but rather seeks to achieve its effect using shapes, colours, and textures.”

-- Oxford English Dictionary

Strong emphasis on form:

Shapes

Textures

Colours

Line

Subject matter and/or meaning is often not clear or hidden

Forms are abstracted through exaggeration or simplification

Might also use close-ups, silhouettes, mirrors, distortions, etc.

Emphasis on form and colour.

Other Art Movements happening at the time:

The Abstract Expressionists. 1940’s and 1950’s. New York City – The New York School

Heavily influences by the spontaneity of Surrealism

First authentically American avant-garde movement (new and experimental ideas and methods in art, music, or literature)

Struggle between self-expression and chaos of the subconscious

Believed art is non-representational and improvisational

Jackson Pollack

Hans Hoffman

Clyfford Still

One of the earliest experimenters in abstract photography.

Heavily focused on form and unique perspective. Not always showing entire subject.

The Beginnings of Abstract Photography

Paul Strand and Abstract Photography

“The decision as to when to photograph, the actual click of the shutter, is partly controlled from the outside by the flow of life, but it also comes from the mind and the heart of the artist. The photograph is the vision of the world and expresses, however subtly, his values

and convictions.”

“Your photography is a record of your living, for anyone who really sees.”

-- Paul Strand

1917

1920

Firstly a Pictorialist Photographer who belonged to:

The New School of American Pictorial PhotographyPhoto-SecessionLinked Ring – (European version of the Photo-Secession)

In 1917 – he began to produce subjective photographs - called vortographs which associated his work with Vorticists – a group of English writers and painters who had been influenced by Cubism and Futurism.

Vortographs were a deliberate attempt to prove that photographers could fracture space into abstract compositions as Cubist painters and sculptures had done.

Alvin Coburn 1882 – 1966, American-born British Photographer

Vortographs: kaleidoscope images made by photographing through triangular arrangements of three mirrors.

Offshoot of Cubism and Futurism based in London

Rejected landscapes and nudes for geometric form leading to abstraction

Published Blast magazine, which featured Vorticists and writers such as Ezra Pound and T.S.Eliot

Featured painters, sculptures, printmakers, drawing and writing.

Vorticism 1914

Examples of Vorticism in Art

Alvin Coburn - Vortographs

Beginning in 1930’s, Moholy-Nagy began an abstract approach to photography, condensed to its fundamentals – line, shape, texture and color.

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Abstract Photography

1934-1939

“The organization of light and shadow effects produce a new enrichment of vision.”

“The enemy of photography is the convention, the fixed rules of ‘how to do’. The salvation of

photograph comes from the experiment.”

-- Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

Otto Steinert and the Fotoform

Avant-garde West German Photographers

Experimental Photography focusing on creative possibilities.

Work was in response to suppression of art by Nazi party.

Inspired by the Bauhaus aesthetic and theories.

Fotoform 1949 – 1958

Otto Steinert and the Fotoform

Otto Steinert 1915 – 1978 German – Founder of Fotoform – Movement of Post-War German Photographers

Nazi party forced art underground.

Fotoform represented the first attempt to bring art back to the surface after the Nazi regime collapsed.

Included Photographers: Peter Keetman, Siegfried Lauterwasser, Wolfgang Reisewitz, Toni Schneiders, and Ludwig Windstosser

Continued Bauhaus’ photographic exploration – (the most advanced school of design in Germany between WWI – WWII) focusing on abstract form.

Fotoform:

Studied medicine originally, but became a photographer in 1947 first working in portraiture.

Founder and intellectual mentor of Fotoform, started in 1949

His work focused on abstraction, close-up views of patterns from nature or from manipulating negatives and prints.

“Photograph gives us for the first time a feeling of the structure of things with an intensity which the eye, limited by its accommodation, had hitherto been quite unable to

perceive.”

“As the most widely-spread vehicle of expression up to the present day, photography is called upon to mould the visual consciousness of our age. And as the pictorial

technique most generally comprehensible and most easily accessible to lay hands on, it is particularly fitted to promote the mutual understanding of the nations.”

-- Otto Steinert

Harry Callahan also worked heavily in abstract photography

1940 - 1960

Abstract photography began in 1917 but continues even today.

“I wish more people felt that photography was an adventure the same as life itself and felt that their

individual feels were worth expressing. To me, that makes photography more exciting.”

“I do believe strongly in photography and hope by following it intuitively that when the photographs are

looked at they will touch the spirit in people.”

-- Harry Callahan

Arguably the most famous abstract photographer

Travelled with abstract expressionists

Wanted to mimic abstract paintings

Peeling paint, posters, graffiti, texture on walls, tar on asphalt

Leaves the viewer open to interpret the images themselves, without the photographer forcing meaning on the viewer

Aaron Siskind 1903 – 1991 American

Images feature subjects not easily identifiable.

Not purely an abstract photographer – he worked in

many photographic genres through his career.

He worked to communicate ideas, feelings, and

perspectives on life and history.

His abstract phase was between 1940 - 1986

“When I make a photograph, I want it to be an altogether new object, complete and self-contained, whose basic condition is

order.”

“The only nature I’m interested in is my own nature.”

-- Aaron Siskind

Minor White

Spiritualist, Buddist

1908 – 1976 American

His photographic work extended photography’s range of expression and greatly influenced creative photography in mid-20th century.

Worked with Ansel Adams, Alfred Stieglitz, and Edward Steichen.

Editor of both Image and Aperture Magazines.

1947

SpiritualismSimplicityPeace

“Be still with yourself until the object of your attention affirms your presence.”

“Vision without association – pristine vision.”

“No matter how slow the film, Spirit always stands long enough for the photographer it has

chosen.”

-- Minor White

Visual CharacteristicsSubject matter often hidden

Emphasis on form

Experimentation

Have Fun! Let go of expectations

Not predictable

Adam Fuss – camera less

Uta Barth – soft focus, form

Wolfgang Tillmans

Susan Dederges – mimics natural forms or landscape

Abstract Photographers of today for further research …..

Adam Fuss – camera less photography

Uta Barth

Wolfgang Tillmans

Susan Dederges – mimics natural forms or landscape with photograms and camera-less photography.