Abstract Photography – Has Photography Come Of Age

Abstract Photography – Has Photography Come Of Age
By Henry Bateman

“Never have I found the limits of the photographic potential.
Every horizon, upon being reached, reveals another beckoning in
the distance. Always, I am on the threshold.” -W. Eugene Smith

The invention of the camera liberated painting from its
reportage role. Gone was the need to produce a likeness, detail
the events of the story, painting was free to express emotions.
True what had gone before contained an emotional content but now
painting could experiment and through imaginative interpretation
allow the emotional content to predominate.

As the 19th century evolved and throughout the 20th century
painters from the impressionists through the cubists and
expressionists to the minimalists could to use colour, line and
form to go straight to the emotional content of their work. The
representational aspect of the work become coincidental and was
pushed to the point that it became akin to lying on the grass
making shapes out of clouds. Enjoyable as it may be it is
secondary to the nature of clouds.

The introduction of the digital darkroom has given this freedom
to photographers. The range of tools to fix and enhance the
camera’s capture when pushed to its extremes produces a range of
fascinating effects. When added to the filters built into the
better software, images can be produced that any comparison to
the original photograph is purely coincidental.

With the use of these tools, the skilled photographic artist
can take the pop song and create, in visual terms, the lyric
beauty of a baroque symphony or the down town jive of a jazz
variation without a tree or high rise in sight. Just the light
captured by the camera and fine tuned into something completely
different, something new that comes from the photographer.

The photographer has been liberated like the painter before
them by technology. Now photographs can explore the full range
of human experience including those that have no words to
express them. Large statements will be accessible by the
photographer not only in physical terms. Like their painter
counterparts a large canvas is becoming the order of the day.
That this canvas can express feelings rather than just
illustrate them denotes that the photograph has become an adult
in the arts.

About the Author: Henry Bateman is an artist/photographer. His
work can be seen at http://www.pissedpoet.com

Source: http://www.isnare.com

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