Abstract Photography and I

While abstraction in photography is certainly more than 100 years old, probably about as old as photography itself, abstraction is still a fairly new deal in the grand scheme of arts. With flickr groups dedicated to abstract photography (here) and the lomograph gaining popularity every year, abstract photography seems to be ready for some breakthroughs to shake it up, because unfortunately so many people are grasping for labels for their work that lots of what gets called abstract photography actually isn't that abstract at all. My biggest problem with most of this is a tendency to call an image abstract because it has limited depth of field and was taken with a macro lens (or micro for you nikonians out there). That's WEAK SAUCE! Or weak tea. Whichever you don't prefer. I don't have a problem with recognizable shapes within an abstract photo, as in Paul Strand's photo from a previous post. I don't know exactly what my problem is. I guess I have a bee in my bonnet right now.
Anyways, last week I was swinging my camera by it's strap and tripping the shutter via timer mode to get these images. These were all exposed at f22 for 1/30 to 1/15 of a second while whipping the camera around as fast and recklessly as possible. The last image isn't mine it's by Paul Strand, and it's AMAZING.

Fine Art Photography Historicals: Pictorialism vs. Modernism

This post is inspired by a slide that Maria Harper uses in her class Photographic Art History at Langara College. These images, both taken by Alfred Stieglitz, clearly show Stieglitz's transition from Pictorialism into Modernism.
Compare the atmospheric qualities of From the Back Window from 1915 with and the bold geometric shapes of Looking Northwest from the Shelton from 1932.

From the Back Window, 291, 1915

The way the eye is drawn into this image through the use of depth and a foreground path-like element contrasts nicely with the second image's unyielding two-dimensionality.

Looking Northwest from the Shelton, 1932



Looking Northwest from the Shelton seems to trap the eye within the frame using the oppressive lines of 30's era skyscrapers. The lack of a foreground path into the image minimizes what little depth is in the photograph and references the medium by drawing attention to it's inability to show true depth.
It's important to note that Pictorialism as a style became outmoded around 1915 and so From the back Window, 291 does have some very modernist aspects.