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On the Scales of Photographic Abstraction

Bibliographic Data

ID12919456
AuthorsA Fisher (0000-0002-8913-4165, corresponding author)
Year2016
Volume9
Issue2
Pages203-215
Publication date2016-05-03
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenuePhotographies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1754-0763 • E-ISSN: 1754-0771
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17540763.2016.1181100
OpenAlexW2489396081
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited3

This article explores three key ways in which questions of abstraction have been and continue to be closely associated with photography: the tradition of photographs that desire to “be” abstract; the invisible but determining forms of abstraction central to capitalism and shaping of photography as a technical-historical form; and the technical-conceptual abstractions embedded in and structuring of photographic apparatuses. The exploration of these themes is pursued through analysis of Vilém Flusser’s philosophy of photography, Lambert Wiesing’s analysis of abstract photography and Allan Sekula’s critique of capitalist modes of equivalence and exchange as these impact on the photographic. These analyses are pursued through exploration of the issues, processes and operations of “scale”, “scaling” and “scalability” entailed in these three modes of abstraction and in their critical and theoretical reflection. The aim of this strategy is to outline and to analyse the complex web of abstractions that are central to photography and the modes of scale that are crucial to abstraction in this context. The article suggests that to encounter or to think about abstraction photographically is to operate within some modulation of scale and that this may in fact be the closest one can get to envisioning the complexity of abstraction in the photographic context

Abstraction · Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Cartography · Context (archaeology · Database · Epistemology · Geography · Photography · Scalability · Scale (ratio · Sociology · Structuring · Visual arts · Art, Politics, and Modernism · Computer Science · History · Law · Philosophy · Photography and Visual Culture · Visual Culture and Art Theory

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  • Towards a theory of techno-imagination

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Unique citing works5
Citations per year0,71
Citation span2019 - 2025 (7)
Citation velocityrecent
Highly citedNo
Citation typesNeutral: 5

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