Photo Alchemy
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Photo AlchemyThe workbenchCollage and montageCut and rebuiltAfrican Art FusionWith Simon ShonePollock, Rothko and forty years with a camera: what abstract photography is, how it is made, and how to enjoy it.
The turning point, when it came, surprised me. I was preparing a paper to present to my students, and I wanted to look properly at the expressionist side of abstract art.
I had always loved the work of Jackson Pollock. I never knew why; I just did. And I had started to be drawn to Mark Rothko, purely because of his simplicity, and the power of that simplicity.
On the one hand there was Pollock: loud, bold, expressive, driven by pattern. On the other, Rothko: colourful, quiet, driven by design and balance. And you could argue that Pollock's paintings have balance too, loud as they are.
Two things Pollock said stayed with me. The further he moved from the usual tools of the painter, the easel, the palette, the brushes, the better his expressive work became. And when a reviewer wrote that his pictures had no beginning and no end, Pollock said the man had not meant it as a compliment, but it was one. I liked that very much.
That paper changed the way I look at abstraction, in painting and in photography. This article is what I have learnt since, and what I would want anyone to know before they make, or buy, an abstract photograph.
Abstract photography moves away from a literal representation of reality, using colour, shape, line, form, texture and technique to create a visual or emotional response that is open to personal interpretation.
It is a complete 180 degree turn from the literal record of pure photography. The reality is stripped away and replaced with shape, colour, line, texture, form, light and movement. Pure photography tells you what was in front of the camera. Abstract photography asks you what it makes you feel. The subject may still be there, a tree, a wave, a forest after a fire, but it is no longer the point. What matters is what the light, the colour and the movement do to you.
I like to break abstraction into two.
Pure abstract: Manic Monday, an original painting
Behind a veil: Eminence No.5Pure abstract. Here the reality is gone altogether. We have to do all the work ourselves, reassembling the picture into what we believe we can see, and noticing what it does to us emotionally. Pollock and Rothko live here, although Rothko is more designed.
Abstract impressionism: the subject behind a veil. Here reality is stripped away and then put back behind a veil. We understand the piece, but we cannot quite see the actual subject; it is disguised. This is less intimidating and easier to live with, and it still lets the viewer connect the dots and make up their own story, without being told the story.
Most of my photographs sit behind the veil, and within it a piece can lean either way. Rhythmus leans towards the abstract: you can work out more or less what it is, but only just. Eminence leans the other way: you can see exactly what is going on, and the veil is laid over it.
Abstract art can do that even when it is loud: when chaos is brought together into pattern, as Pollock did; when the design is so simple that it becomes quiet, as with Rothko; or when the veil itself is what draws you in.
The strongest reason, I believe, is that abstract art meets us at the point of imagination. As human beings we cannot help trying to make meaning and associations, and the abstract invites us to.
With realistic art the mystery is handed to us. It is put in front of us and we are told to deal with it. With abstract art the mystery is hidden behind the picture, and we are given the freedom to bring our own imagination to it. That freedom is its strength. There is no single correct way to read the work, and every time we come back to it we may see something different.
I also like that an abstract piece will appeal to one person and not to another. It takes us away from what I call calendar work, where you are told what to see and told what to think, and it is pretty and nice. Abstract work is more complex, and more interesting, than that.
We are given an unapologetic allowance to bring our own memories and experiences into what we see. Even when we think we do not understand a piece, it can reach the deepest part of us. And because we rarely meet abstraction in the natural world, except in certain patterns in nature, it offers a refreshing alternative to reality.
If you can't tell what it is, is it still a photograph? It doesn't matter. Taking a photograph is a technical way of recording light. But nobody says how that light has to behave, or how the camera has to be set, in order to record it. The moment you start using the camera creatively, you get away from predictability.
A painter starts with a blank canvas. When you pick up a camera first, you start with a full one. Both can be enticing, on their own or together.
I have never understood why I should choose between them. To me it is peaches and cream: why would I choose between the peaches and the cream, when I can have both? The camera can start an abstract and the paint can finish it, or the paint can start it and the camera can finish it.
Every picture here is my own, and each shows a different road into abstraction. I have included the detail of how each one was made, because I think you learn more from the real numbers than from a list of tips.
Rhythmus No.1Rhythmus is a series of multiple exposures made in the camera, trees in most cases, up to nine frames laid one on top of another, step by step. I photograph the trees in slightly flatter light, which holds the detail. Then one or two of the exposures are made directly into the sun, and that is what gives the series its ethereal, almost heavenly glow.
A series like this can take up to fifty attempts before one works. But when it works, it sizzles.
Eminence No.5Eminence No.5 holds around thirteen or fourteen exposures. One is given the whole shape of the tree, in the warmth of late afternoon light. The rest are layers, controlled with light over exposure so they never dominate that main frame. That is where the veil comes from. A couple of exposures of textures close by help to bind it together.
Quintessence No.2Quintessence No.2 is twelve to fifteen frames. The trees in the background look like a cluster, yet it was only one or two trees, exposed in different positions across the frame. The texture is small stones in a pool of water left behind by a rain storm, and the foreground is a patch of grass nearby, made with a different lens to enlarge it and bend it a little.
Plein de ViePlein de Vie is more than ten exposures, made at different colour temperatures and mixing sharp, blurred and out of focus frames. At least four of them are made as close as possible to the original, so the detail of the trees survives. It was photographed in shadow, the colour warmed in processing, with traces of highlight in the background to bring the ethereal look.
Aura No.2In Aura I walk around one tree in a hidden valley near Swellendam, layering each viewpoint in a 360 degree multiple exposure, to make an impression that feels almost like a memory rather than a record.
With Secrets in Eden I set out to emulate painters I love, to show that a similar feeling could be reached through the lens, without a brush or paint. If your camera allows it, you make a multiple exposure, then call that result up as the starting point for the next set, and keep building, layer by layer, as if it were brushstroke after brushstroke. Here I combined in focus, out of focus and moving frames with over exposed and under exposed layers, which deepen the shadows in some places and project the highlights in others.
Secrets in Eden No.1, my Monet
Secrets in Eden No.2, my Van GoghSecrets in Eden No.1 is my Monet, and if you know his water garden at Giverny you will feel the connection. No.2 is my Van Gogh, built on his golds and his blues.
Fire and Ash No.2Fire and Ash No.2 is intentional camera movement in a forest after a bush fire. The forest was in even light, so nothing separated from the background, and it needed a few traces of highlight coming through the shadow: those small lighter points. I moved the camera gently by hand, vertically, and gave it a slight shake during the movement.
It takes a good thirty to forty attempts to get one to really work.
Illusion No.1Illusion No.1 is camera movement too, the kind most people mean when they say ICM, but with a moving subject: the waves. The movement is strong and deliberate during the exposure, so the timing is critical.
Illusions of Summer No.1Illusions of Summer No.1 is a woman walking on the beach. It works like camera movement, with one difference: it is photographed in stronger, brighter, more directional light, with the exposure held back by a neutral density filter. That keeps the direction of the light, you even keep some shadow, and the camera movement and her movement together make the illusion.
Illusion No.7Illusion No.7 combines a straightforward exposure with an out of focus exposure for the ethereal look, a frame made with camera movement, and one or two exposures made specifically for the sun coming through the trees.
The Creation series was made the same way, multiple exposure and camera movement together, on one final morning in the Hemel-en-Aarde Valley. Read the story behind Creation
Fynbos Palette No.3Fynbos Palette No.3 uses an exceptionally shallow depth of field with a longer lens. The plant was lightly backlit and covered in dew, so the light dances off the drops and makes illusory highlights, while the few areas of sharpness create the impressionist point of the picture.
After the Fire No.2After the Fire No.2 is the same approach against a darker background in shade. Open shade is lit by the cool light of the sky, around 7,500 Kelvin, so it records as blue, while the plant itself sat in light of around 4,500 to 5,000 Kelvin. I exposed for the highlight and let the shade fall darker.
After the Fire No.3After the Fire No.3 goes further. It was made in flat, neutral light, deliberately out of focus, with selective depth bringing a few elements back into slight focus. This one leans more to the abstract: it could be anything, but it is just enough behind the veil to tell you it is probably flora.
Illusion No.5Illusion No.5 is a single, straightforward photograph: the reflection of a forest in a lake, on an absolutely still morning. I waited for a light breeze. As it fell on the water, the ripples began, and the forest broke into a fragmented illusion.
No layers, no movement of the camera: just patience, and the right moment.
Ethereal Reverie No.2Ethereal Reverie is infrared photography. Infrared lifts a scene out of the ordinary: the highlights take on a soft, glowing quality, and the shadows deepen into quiet pools of contrast.
Complex Simplicity No.1Not everything that looks quiet and soft is abstract, and it is worth knowing the difference. Complex Simplicity is a long exposure series, and by definition it is simplicity: simplistic imagery rather than abstraction. It resembles reality very closely.
And yet exposure time can smooth over and harness the movement of the ocean and the sky, almost as if the scene has been sanded down with fine water paper, until only the essentials of shape are left. For me it is at its best when it is really smooth, with a feel like talcum powder. Complex Simplicity No.1 is a good example of that edge, where simplicity starts to lean towards abstract impressionism without quite becoming abstract.
“Simplicity in composition is not the absence of thought. It is the result of a great deal of it.”
Analogous Anthology No.7Some of my work leaves the single frame behind altogether and is built from many photographs, and from paint, into montage and collage. That story, from weathered boats to leftover paint on scrap paper, is told in When the Lens Becomes a Brush.
Manic Monday, original paintingAnd sometimes there is no camera at all. Manic Monday is a large original painting made the way Pollock described: the canvas on the studio floor, and the paint thrown and added from a ladder, from different angles, with dowel sticks and broom handles rather than brushes. It is pure abstract, abstract expressionism, with concrete texture and text worked in underneath the paint.
Photographers have been doing this for more than a hundred years. Alvin Langdon Coburn made his vortographs through a kaleidoscope of mirrors in 1917. Man Ray laid objects straight onto photographic paper in the 1920s and called the results rayographs. Alfred Stieglitz photographed clouds and called them Equivalents, pictures of a feeling rather than of the sky. And Aaron Siskind photographed peeling walls and paint until they read like abstract expressionist canvases.
The tools have changed. The question each of them asked has not: what happens when a photograph stops describing, and starts to feel?
Here is the honest answer: it is a mystery, and it will not appeal to everybody.
An abstract feels purposeful. And yet I can tell you that most of the best abstracts I have made came from an accident, not from a plan. The secret is recognising the accident: seeing that something has an appeal, and being ready to show it, knowing that someone will love it and someone will not.
When I am working, the hardest part is working away at a picture until a feeling arrives that I cannot really describe. It is like a tickle in the tummy, a warm feeling of: wow, something is working here. I cannot quite explain it, but I like it.
If you are standing in front of an abstract piece and wondering whether it is for you, try this.
We have noticed in our own gallery that abstract work is a little harder to sell, and I understand why. A couple will come in looking for a piece for their home or office, and usually one of them will love a piece while the other is not so sure. Every now and then they both love it, and then it is a done deal.
That is the point. When you ask someone why they connect with an abstract piece, they will say, "I can't really tell you, but what I am seeing is…", and then they describe something only they can see, drawn from their own life.
If you are choosing a piece for a particular wall, the gallery's art preview service can show it in your own room first. The abstract works in this article are available as signed prints and originals.
Abstraction is, for me, a mystery, a harnessing of emotion that does not require explanation. Whether it begins with a camera, a brush or a broom handle, it asks the same thing of us: to stop being told, and start to feel.
Martin Osner
Sold through Osner Art Gallery online, shipped worldwide, and shown in person at Osner Gallery in Hout Bay.
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