The Journey towards Abstraction

Photography or what?

 

Remixer Two, Ink jet print, 36" by 65", 2008

Where does an image stop becoming a fine art photograph and start becoming a piece of graphic fine art?

Or I could ask, How do we get

from here,

                                                                                         

                                                                                            Darkland, 20 x 20, inkjet print, 2008

to here?                    

I'll try and explain!

Often when I'm working with post processing faze of photography, I begin to adhere to what I call the Cult of the Antique, and begin adding faux self-reflexive elements from old photographic processes that mimic noise and grunge of the analogue world.

I do this because it helps, in my opinion, combat the sterile perfection of the digital world that seems to surround us more and more each day.

                                            Darkland with Grunge, 20 x 20, inkjet print, 2008

     

And so while I embrace digital tools as merrily as child in the proverbial candy store, I sometimes temper these powerful processes with things that make the image feel more 'real' ,or at least, effected by the causality of real world forces, such as time,  wear and tare, and dirt.

Often when doing this I'll start to get ideas about graphic design and other manipulations that go beyond the normal photographic idiom. In this case Darkland with Grunge became a foundation element for Traverse. After adding the wonderful 'grunge' to Darkland, I proceeded to embed it even further into a varieties of textures and graphic elements, which, when combined with another image taken at the Getty Museum in L.A., became this wide format work of art  I call Traverse. Here is the point I believe the work of art stopped being just a photograph:

Traverse, Inkjet print, 20"x 62" 2008 

 (To see a larger version where you can scroll around on this go here. )  I like this piece, I really do, but I also see the wide aspect ratio as a possible liability in terms of display. So I  tried making it into two pieces that could be displayed together in separate frames, the right hand version looking like this:

 

So, at this point,   I became curious what would happen if I kept folding and manipulating the image. I broke the wider version of Traverse up into three overlapping files, rotated each of them into a vertical position.  Then I sectioned them off in areas roughly approximated by the golden mean and flipped those sections in the horizontal and vertical. Next,  I combined all three together in the same file, and added several more flips and then some circles. The circle elements were done by selecting a round section of the image rotating it 90 degrees.  Other areas had their density and gamma adjusted to steer the eye in the proper directions and then the color was manipulated as a last touch. in this case the whites were pushed towards yellow and the blacks were given a purplish tonality. And now we have entered, I think into the land of true abstraction. 

 

Remixer One, Ink jet print, 36" by 65", 2008

 

Remixer Two, is mostly a variation on this same process, with some more graphic overlays added on top. Hope you enjoyed this description of my journey from specific image to abstract imagery.

Faux & Hoax

 

A fragment of the last letter or word ever received from my great uncle George, found along with the above photograph in Uncle Arthur’s ‘secret chest’ along with the other difficult & awkward items.

“My dearest Abigail, I trust this letter will cross ocean and desert to find you comporting your self in a continued state of bravery and the normal stoic wisdom you draw upon in my times of absence. Today a wondrous thing happened! The Berber guides took us up some difficult terrain to the entrance of a hidden valley that shows amazing signs of Greco Roman Culture further south than anyone ever dared dream finding it! I’m so excited my dear one! Tomorrow we leave camp again at dawn to thoroughly explore this amazing canyon. I am optimistic we will overcome the hesitancy of our guides to enter this place with a little bribe and some inevitable squabbling. They keep insisting on some drivel about a curse—the usual high drama my dear, clearly a ploy to get more money from the mad Englishmen, I'm quite sure of it.. We will progress without them with if need be. I’m sending some undeveloped emulsions along with these notes and letters and please, please take great care in getting them to Professor Higmans at the Royal Museum. He will know what to do. In the mean time I remain your faithful George and hope that this discovery means that soon our over-tired little troop will be able to come home in triumph and then we can move on in our lives, my precious bird, to fulfill all our dreams!”

Signed: George Tomland the III, Somewhere south of Tamanrasset, 1879

Lately I've been more and more enamored of the combination of words and images.  Often Poetry, but in this case a little piece of micro fiction.  Just makes me smile. 

Following Your Dreams

A philosophy of art.

 

Oregon Dune Sonata

Landscapes are special to me because they can represent an expression and a  striving for the ideal--the longing to roam in a a world of beauty and sophisticated balance. The other night I dreamed of a landscape quite different form this. I don't know what it was, some insanely beautiful combination of Scottish Highlands, New Zealand and Norway. Alpine meadows and streams running over the land. You could hike anywhere in this world and see divine vistas. Life in such places is completely free and there are no consequences that last beyond the morning's bleary eyed awakening. Dreams will forever amaze me


So this desire to recreate dreams in art... I've thought a lot about this and for a long time was haunted artistically about the impossibility of being able to do this. Especially in the world of Cinema, my other big passion and beloved art form, it is very expensive and hard to re-create the imagined visions. But two things have helped me: First the magic  of the tools become more affordable even as they become more powerful, and two, I've learned something very important. And that is to follow the dreams without expectation for where I will end up.

Inevitably when we follow a dream we are disappointed by barriers and things that stand in our way. But, if we are willing to be flexible and take an interesting turn at each barrier, looking for what opportunities are there, sometimes we can eventually find a sort of idyllic dream space, though perhaps  not the one we thought we were going for.

This has become one of my big driving philosophies of art. To be willing to give in to the change in plan, the new idea, the alternate direction, and let go of the strict preconceived idea of what I was setting out to do!

Does this make any sense to you?

I guess in a way I try to trade the haunting shroud of desire for the bright light of faith--faith that by always stepping forward I will eventually get the golden moment. And the process of art is  much more interesting and surprising this way

These images of the Oregon Dunes were taken late in the day in the summer of 2007. The one below is has a much more low-con processing scheme and overlayed with the texture from one of my favorite washi papers.