Assignment 4: Is Abstract Photography really Art? – a critical review.

Write a 2,000-word essay (excluding any quotes) on one of the areas of landscape
practice you have encountered during this course so far.
The critical review is an opportunity for you to gain a greater insight into an area,
theme, debate, or other issue relating to landscape photography that is of particular
interest to you. You must choose a topic that is relevant to your own practice in
some way, in order to help you to contextualise your practice and to show that your
understanding of landscape photography is informed by relevant practitioners. You
should include an in-depth evaluation of the work of key practitioners that you
reference in your essay. Where appropriate, also reference your own individual
images, bodies of work and ongoing or forthcoming projects.
Your written work should clearly show that you have engaged with theoretical,
historical, and cultural debates around landscape practice within photography and
visual culture and demonstrate that you have developed academically as well as
creatively.

To sum up, your critical review should demonstrate that you can:
 understand relevant topics and issues around landscape practice
 use research skills competently
 analyse appropriate resources
 articulate your own, informed ideas at a level commensurate with HE5 level
study.

Remember to include:
 correctly cited references and quotations (Harvard referencing system)
 referenced illustrations
 word counts, both excluding and including quotations.
 Finally, make sure that your essay is critical rather than narrative. This means
that you should focus your efforts on evaluating, comparing, contrasting, and
questioning the work and theoretical ideas, and not on recounting biographical or
historical information, unless it has a significant relation to practice.
Introduction

Why am I asking this question you may ask? I have become interested in Abstract
Photography in recent years. When I first looked at this assignment I was rather lost
on where to start. Then someone said to me think of a question. The first thing that
came to mind was a conversation I had with a member of a local art group when
there was a pop-up exhibition of members work. I remarked there was no
photography in the exhibition and her reply was: " We don't accept photography
because it's not really art"! I then thought I wonder what she would think of abstract
photography, and so the question was born.

Research Methodology

Literature Search
Using the following keywords:
Abstract art, abstract expressionism, abstract painting, Abstract photography, art
photography, history of abstract art, history of abstract photography.

Databases:
UCA, Open Access, Google Scholar, Academia, Ethos, The British Library, MoMa, and other
digital libraries.

Reviewing individual photographers:

Online Galleries including, Aubrey Beardsley, Virtual Museums, Hauser & Wirth.

Online Streaming events and Tutorials

Specific Landscape photographers
Film & TV sources.

A short history of Abstract Photography

According to Wikipedia Abstract Photography is:
sometimes called non-objective, experimental, conceptual or concrete photography, is a
means of depicting a visual image that does not have an immediate association with the
object world and that has been created through the use of photographic equipment,
processes or materials (Wikipedia webpage).It explores shape, form and operates outside the
usual frames of reference, it explores form and structure, can extract detail and mystifies
rather than explains (Trotter J).

It is impossible to talk about abstract photography without its relationship to abstract art.
Man Ray and László Moholy-Nagy are often credited of having pioneered the genre from the
Surrealist perspective, but in fact it was Alfred Stieglitz who should really take the credit. He
was determined that photography should be seen as a fine art genre and his book
“Photography as Fine Art” was published in 1901. (Szarkowski J.). The genre continued to
develop throughout the 20th century. Even though abstract art can be traced back to the
work of the Impressionists of the 19th century, it was during the 20th century that historians
consider “pure art” emerged. That is to say that art that was creative and not connected to
conventional recognisable conventions.

The Origins of Abstract Art

Art historians typically identify the early 20th century as an
important historical moment in the history of abstract art. During this time,
artists worked to create what they defined as "pure art": creative works that
were not grounded in visual perceptions, but in the imagination of the artist.
Influential works from this time period include Kandinsky's 1911 "Picture with
a Circle" and "Caoutchouc," created by the French avant-garde artist Francis
Picabia (1879–1953) in 1909.

The roots of abstract art, however, can be traced back much further. Artists
associated with movements such as the 19th century's Impressionism and
Expressionism were experimenting with the idea that painting can capture
emotion and subjectivity. It need not simply focus on seemingly objective
visual perceptions. Going back even further, many ancient rock paintings,
textile patterns, and pottery designs captured a symbolic reality rather than
attempting to present objects as we see them.

Early Influential Abstract Artists

Kandinsky is often considered one of the most influential abstract artists. A
view of how his style progressed from representational to pure abstract art
over the years is a fascinating look at the movement in general. Kandinsky
himself was adept at explaining how an abstract artist may use color to give a
seemingly meaningless work purpose.
Kandinsky believed that colors provoke emotions. Red was lively and
confident; green was peaceful with inner strength; blue was deep and
supernatural; yellow could be warm, exciting, disturbing or totally bonkers;
and white seemed silent but full of possibilities. He also assigned instrument
tones to go with each color. Red sounded like a trumpet; green sounded like a
middle-position violin; light blue sounded like a flute; dark blue sounded like a
cello, yellow sounded like a fanfare of trumpets; white sounded like the pause
in a harmonious melody.

These analogies to sounds came from Kandinsky's appreciation for music,

especially the works of the contemporary Viennese composer Arnold
Schoenberg (1874–1951). Kandinsky's titles often refer to the colors in the
composition or to music, for example, "Improvisation 28" and "Composition
II." 

The French artist Robert Delaunay (1885–1941) belonged to Kandinsky's Blue

Rider (Die Blaue Reiter) group. With his wife, Russian-born Sonia Delaunay-
Turk (1885–1979), they both gravitated toward abstraction in their own
movement, Orphism or Orphic Cubism.

References

Szarkowski J. (nk) Alfred Stieglitz An American Photographer Encyclopaedia Britannica

website: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alfred-Stieglitz (accessed 04/06/2020)
Trotter J. (nk) Definition of Abstract Photography. Abstracted Reality ™ webpage
https://abstractedreality.com/definition-of-abstract-photography/ (accessed 04/06/2020)
Wikipedia Abstract Photography. Webpage
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_photography . (accessed 04/06/2020)