What is Abstraction in Photography
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4160266 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Diarmuid Costello (University of Warwick, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 58 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 385-400 |
| Publication date | 2018-12-18 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The British Journal of Aesthetics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0007-0904 • E-ISSN: 1468-2842 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/aesthj/ayy037 |
| OpenAlex | W2904163684 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
There is confusion about what counts as abstraction in photography: art theorists class very different kinds of photographs as abstract, and common philosophical views of photography, if true, should cause us to doubt their very possibility. I address two questions here: ‘What is Abstraction?’ and ‘What is Abstraction in Photography?’ To the answer the second, I briefly consider a third: ‘What is Photography?’ so that the resulting account is not undermined by a poor theory of photography. In answer to my target question, I outline a schematic (and non-exhaustive) typology of kinds of work generically typed as ‘abstract’ in order to bring out some differences between them. I distinguish ‘proto’, ‘faux’, ‘constructed faux’, ‘weak’, ‘strong’, ‘constructed’ and ‘concrete’ abstraction, although the differences between them are not always clear-cut and there is room for debate about borderline cases. My goal is not to resolve all such cases, but to show: (i) that there is a range of broadly identifiable kinds of abstraction in photography; (ii) that images can be abstract in a variety of ways and for a variety of reasons; and (iii) why certain images are not abstract, despite being widely typed as such. \n \n
Abstraction · Aesthetics · Art · Class (philosophy · Confusion · Epistemology · Homogeneous · Meaning (existential · Photography · Psychoanalysis · Schematic · Sociology · Typology · Variety (cybernetics · Visual arts · Aesthetic Perception and Analysis · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Mathematics · Philosophy · Photography and Visual Culture · Psychology · Visual Culture and Art Theory
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,2 |
| Citation span | 2021 - 2021 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |