Reading: The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography

This book is going to be a key reference as I explore the history and developments in abstraction and photography:

Rexer, Lyle (2009) The edge of vision: the rise of abstraction in photography, Aperture, New York. 

Rexer’s (2009) comprehensive investigation is the first of its kind to explore the phenomenon of abstraction in photography, to trace it historically and document the practices of contemporary abstract artists/photgraphers. His goal was to create a collectionn of ‘photgraphs that refuse to disclose fully the images they contain’ (p9).

There are six substantive chapters ordered chronologically. The beginning of each chapter includes an essay that conceptualises the period. This is followed by a selection of short biographies that focus on artists that exemplify the period and finally a few colour plates that showcase the works of each artist in realtion to the argument. This is an extended annotation as I have found this reference most relevant and stimulating.

Chapter 1, Disclosure an Uncertainty in Early Photography, focusing on the work of William Henry Fox Talbot and others, traces the confusion between accuracy in rendering a subject with ‘the capacity to imagine and express’ (p25). Chapter 2, In Light’s Captivity: Spiritualized Photography and the Photo-Secession, focuses on the turn of photography’s first century. Drawing on the work of Steichen, Coburn and Strand, Rexer argues that this period marked the beginning of thinking about photography as art and witnessed the initial exploration (which continues today) of the capacity of photographs to express emotions and ideas.

Chapter 3, Modernism: New Eyes for Old, charts the efforts of photographers like Man Ray and Moholy-Nagy to ‘realign photography with freer and more open ways of representing than a strictly  documentary system’ (p68). Chapter 4, Stairways to Heaven, begins in 1960 with the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition, The Sense of Abstraction in Contemporary Photography, the first exhibition of abstract photography to be held at the Museum. This marked a time when photographers ‘imagined their goal as eternity, atemporality, changelessness beyond change’ with a greater focus in the private rather than the collective experience. At this time, photographers including Minor White, Lotte Jacobi and Aaron Siskind were at the centre of photographic abstraction experimenting not only with form but also technique and materials.

Chapter 5, Subversives, focuses on the 60s and subsequent decades contrasting the work of Diane Arbus and Robert Frank with the subversive work of Ray K. Metzker, Ellen Carey and James Welling who were pursuing an ‘intense and searching curiosity’ (p135) about the possibilities of photography. The sixth chapter, This Is [Not] a Photograph, is by far the longest and features the work of twenty artists. Against the Düsseldorf Art Academy’s focus on ‘meticulously deadpan’ sociohistorical documentation phtographers including Marco Breuer (who explored the three-dimensionality of the photograph), Susan Rankaitis, Silvio Wolf, Shrine Gill, to name just a few, continued to push the boundaries conceptually and in practice. The emphasis was on ‘seeing with’ rather than ‘looking through’ the photograph with the abstract photograph signifying ‘not the given but the possible’ (p180). In this way Rexer argues that ‘undisclosed photography orients itself toward a perpetual present, or a future’. 

The final chapter is a compilation of excerpts from refelective writing by and about thirteen of the artists featured in the book. There is a substantial list of further reading which will be extremely useful as I develop my literature review.

In reading both Charlotte Cotton’s (2015) Photography is Magicand Lyle Rexer’s (2009) The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in PhotographyI have learned about different kinds of abstraction and begun to get a deeper understanding about form, line and colour. I now realise that colour will be a significant area for future reading. These two books have also provided an opportunity for me to think about the emotional dimension of abstract photography. In particular, I was able to think about two of my questions: What techniques might be used to manipulate images to produce a complex idea about edge? Which artists/photographers have explored ideas of edge? What have they created and how do they talk about their work? Rexler’s overview of abstraction will continue to provide substantial inspiration, both in terms of theoretical ideas and practice, as I develop my folio and thinking.