Color is for me the purest form of expression, the purest abstract reality.”

– Jim Hodges

Largely influenced by some photographer friends of mine – Lane and Cemal, in particular – I’ve spent some time over the past few years creating abstract images.  The experience has been a variety of different things to me – challenging, infinitely interesting, and at times frustrating.

Abstract photography is difficult, if not impossible, for me to fully define.  Just when I think I have a workable definition, I see something that changes my opinion.

I know an abstract image when I see one, but I’ve yet to define in concrete terms just what makes an image abstract.  At its most general level, I believe that abstraction presents  a subject in a manner in which we are not accustomed to seeing things.  It can be minimal or complete – the former often has a recognizable subject or infers a subject, where the latter generally contains no recognizable subject at all.

With this said, does a photograph need to depict reality or even be understood to be appreciated?  Take the image to the left, for example.  What is its “reality”?  Do you understand it?  As the photographer who created the image, do I understand it?  What matters to me in this image is the interplay of the two colors and two shapes in the image, and nothing else. I never intended to let the viewer know what  object I shot to create the image.  Understanding an image, or why a photographer makes an image, isn’t always necessary.  It might be interesting to know why an image was made, yet that understanding may not always enhance the image, and in fact may detract from it and the statement it makes.

The inlaid image here, while still abstract in the sense that the viewer may not be able to determine exactly what it depicts, does show something more recognizable, but the image is still largely an image depicting an interaction of rough shapes, lines, and various shades of blue.  Is it abstract?  To me, yes, it is.  It challenges the viewer to think about what the subject may be, but at the same time the image can simply be appreciated solely for its shapes, colors, and texture.

The image spanning the top of this post, of the three images presented here, depicts reality most obviously.  We may not be able to determine what the blue background is, but we do know there are three ropes crisscrossing the image.  What are these ropes being used for?  What is holding them up?  Why do two lines run parallel to each other and one runs opposite to the other two?  It really doesn’t matter what the answers to these questions are, what matters more is that the abstraction was strong enough for the viewer to ask questions to begin with.  Abstraction challenges the viewer to appreciate the presented image without the visual clues we are accustomed to receiving.

Could it be that the essence of abstraction is that, unlike the answers “conventional” photography offers, abstraction simply raises questions?

© 2009 James A. Fraser