The Mundane and the Abstract

My project this week was, of course, inspired partly by this week's reading. The discussion of the reclaiming and exploration of the "cliche" by certain contemporary photographers really caught my interest. The re-exploration of the mundane though new eyes sounded like a theme with potential, especially in these *unique* times. What better time to take a more intimate look at our immediate surroundings than in the midst of social distancing and stay-in-home orders?

In addition to this week's chapter, I also took inspiration from one of my favorite photographers: Rinko Kawauchi. She is a Japanese photographer who has a very unique way of splicing the everyday with a sort of ethereal transience. I recently was gifted one of her photo books for my birthday (4/20) and I was immediately captivated. While much of her work contains snippets of easily identifiable subjects, they are often obscured in a way that invites interesting questions. Rarely does she include a whole person, a whole building, and almost never a whole face. This semi-abstraction serves to further divorce the photograph from the real, and directs the viewer's attention to the detail that draws her attention, and that alone. In order to effectively isolate foreground subjects, she uses what appears to be a short telephoto lens with a wide aperture (I believe she primarily uses a Rolleiflex TLR film camera). Often, a mere sliver of the subject will be sharply in focus, with the near foreground and background swiftly falling off into "bokeh" （ボケ）, a popularized Japanese term for the out of focus area of a photograph.

Inspired by her approach and the teachings of this chapter, I decided I would try photographing my surroundings with my 50mm (75mm equiv.) f1.8 lens for my digital camera. This is a lens I purchased while at Lawrence primarily to capture better low-light event photos, but I thought the relatively wide aperture could offer some as yet unexplored (by me) artistic effects. Conceptually, I sought to pick out interesting details in my house and yard, and express them in directed, but not necessarily obvious terms. What I ended up with could be seen as a series of various textures, shapes, and abstractions.

As I experimented with the shallow depth of field afforded by the f1.8 aperture, I came to notice something about the way in which we think about photographs. A picture can be considered "in focus" so long as the tiniest sliver of a subject is rendered in sharp detail. But if that tiny area is instead blurred along with the rest of the photograph, the image would be considered "out of focus", and likely discarded in most situations. Artistically however, there is no essential "need" for anything to be in focus. It is often through focus that fine details like faces, eyes, pores, water droplets etc. can be expressed with realism through photography. But nevertheless, it is not a necessity. If one is not concerned with these fine details, and only the relative forms and shapes that make up said objects, precise focus becomes unnecessary. In the same way that one crops a photograph to eliminate unnecessary or distracting elements, "accurate" focus can be done away with entirely, while retaining the essence of the object. My third photograph is of a silver shower head. You probably wouldn't see it at first glance (just as you may not see the "cow" at first in Theo van Doesburg's famous painting: click). But the (very) basic geometry is reflected in the specular highlights: the base, the arching neck, and the head itself. I find it interesting how at a certain level of focus, the specular highlights begin to form their own abstract geometry. Another example of this technique is in my 11th photograph. This was taken of an empty beer bottle, as the evening sun reflected and refracted through it at an angle. Though there is no "detail" as we would traditionally think of it in this image, the basic shape (and color) of the bottle could still be discerned from the points of light (theoretically).

I think my project this week lacks a bit of cohesiveness as a finished work, something I could improve on in future projects. I would be interested in exploring the realm of "out of focus" photography more; I think it could yield some interesting results, and make for a stylistically consistent body of work. Looking forward to future projects!

Flickr link: https://www.flickr.com/photos/183257849@N08/albums/72157714031385837

P.S. You can view some of Rinko Kawauchi's work's on her website: click