Abstract

One usually thinks of photography as a representational art form. After all, with our handy phones we devote far too much time to documenting our lives and the world around us, often in excruciating mundanity. Some of the most memorable photographers in the history of the art form were essentially documentary: Brassai, Cartier Bresson, Ansel Adams, Sabastiao Salgado, Gary Winogrand to name a few. However, there are also those who pursued a more abstract line, whether extracting from everyday scenes elements reduced to the bare abstract elements of line, shape and color, or distorting and manipulating their photos to achieve an abstract vision. Aaron Siskind, Man Ray, Harry Callahan all come to mind. The photos in this collection are a form of "appropriation" as they are based on other works of art in a very different medium: sculpture. As I looked at the works of Richard Serra and James Turrell. In them, I saw line, texture, shadow, reflection and shape by looking at the pieces not as a whole, but up close and in sections.