Photographic Abstraction

Untitled, copyright 2015 Douglas Stockdale

Interestingly one of the aspects of painting that initially drew me in was the potential of a “realist” interpretation of a subject. Although my graphic drawings continued to explore that direct representational possibility, my paintings became more and more abstract. In effect, like those well before me, I came to concurrently understand both the limitations and the exciting possibilities of painting. Thus the eventual insight into the non-representational aspects of photography and my return to working with this medium.

Nevertheless even now as what I believe I photograph as a “straight” subject, it is possible to create photographs from things seen which appear very abstract. Thus I would node to the photographer Aaron Siskind as providing the underlying inspiration for the photograph above.

I think that his “straight” photography appears potentially more abstract due to my cropping and removing it from it’s environmental context. Like a painter, I did change the contrast and the tonal range in Photoshop to push the image closer to what I envisioned at the moment I photographed it.

This is a singular image in that I do not go looking for these ambiguous subjects as part of an on-going project (or at least not at the moment), but I enjoy working with these subjects when the serendipity occurs.

Cheers!