URBAN SETTINGS URBAN ABSTRACT

There are many photographic approaches to the phenomenon of urban spaces, among them the genres of architecture, urban landscape, social documentation and street photography. The images shown here take a different approach. This was inspired by the work of Harry Callahan (1912-1999) and the approach of the somewhat lesser-known American photographer and teacher Aaron Siskind (1903-1991). 

In this approach the three-dimensional reality of urban spaces is regarded as the origin of a new two-dimensional creation – a photograph – that the photographer creates through his personal and entirely subjective visualization of the former. The resulting image bears only a loose resemblance to objective reality. It can, however, concentrate and make visible the essential qualities, the essence, as it were, of reality as we normally perceive it. It thus becomes, in the true meaning of the word, an abstract of concrete and specific reality. Objects in the real word that are subject to change and disorder are given a new and permanent order in the resulting photograph.

The focus of this version of abstract photography lies on its concentration on the aesthetic qualities of forms, shapes, lines and textures. These are made visible through the absence or presence of light and shadow and might also incorporate the reflection and translucence of surfaces and, to a lesser degree, of their colour.

URBAN SETTINGS

URBAN ABSTRACT