The Abstract in 1916?

Untitled from "Camera Work" (plate 9, vol. 49, 1916)
Paul Strand
1916
AC 1989.17

Although Aaron Siskind was certainly a key figure in the move that photography made towards the abstract in the 1950s, abstraction did played a role in the medium from much earlier. For example, in the 1910s, under the influence of Modernist painting, photographers began to make use of formal abstractions in their photographs -- focusing less on the subject material and more on the shapes, tones, and lines in the frame. Paul Strand, influenced strongly by Alfred Steiglitz and Edward Steichen, made this shift in the 1910s as well, making photographs that were much less representative than his predecessors. This famous photo by Strand, titled "Wall Street" is a good example.

http://iconicphotos.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/wall-street-1915-paul-strand.jpg

The Mead holds another example of early abstract photography in the photo above. At first glance, this untitled work appears like a purely mundane object: a white picket fence, a front lawn, a row of houses. One could hardly imagine a more idyllic and representative picture of our land. But look a little closer and the subject material starts to fall away. The background appears fuzzy and indistinct. Nothing about it seems to jump out at the viewer. Instead, the blindingly white fence posts dominate the picture. And not just as fence posts, which they are, but more and more as abstract shapes and forms against a dark backdrop. Squint a little bit, and you see definite white shapes framed by the darkness behind them; the fact that the photo is showing a fence, and a lawn, and a house becomes much less important. The top third of the picture maintains its reality pretty firmly, but if you cover that with your hand, the photo really becomes almost a complete abstraction.

Strand achieves this effect very intentionally. He chose his aperture to have little depth of field so that the fence would be in focus and the background would be indistinct. Similarly, he used the focus on his lens to make the fence sharp while de-emphasizing everything behind it. He picked his exposure, either in the camera or in the darkroom, to make the pickets of the fence as sharply bright as possible, making them stand out more as forms than as what they really are. In sum, Strand did not stumble across this abstract presentation, he knowingly crafted it.

Like the Siskind photograph that we discussed on Tuesday, the nod towards the abstractions that are to come are evident, even though Strand was working decades before Siskind picked up a camera.

-Alex