Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Abstract Photography Which Way Is Up?

Tom Reaume

2020

1 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Abstract Photography Which Way Is Up?

2nd Edition 2020

Portrait Of The Artist Crossing Over To The Dark Side. 2011. – TR

2 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

© 2020 (2nd Edition) by Mr. Tom Reaume (b 1944) London, Canada

Research, text, layout, and design by Tom Reaume

Software – InDesign & Photoshop Elements

Typeface – Helvetica Neue 14 | 20 | 80

Front Cover – Just For You (2006) by Tom Reaume

Back Cover – We Can Choose # 1–3 (2007) by Tom Reaume

[email protected]

A 7-minute Youtube video on my art www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDmHTWOJZh0

ISBN 978-0-9680082-9-4

Any and all of my pure abstract (anti-still) photographs in this book may be used freely in other online publications without asking for my permission. Just give me credit.

Dedicated to my brother Franklin.

Uncommon Photographs for the uncommon collector. Any single photograph (up to 20 inches) in this book may be bought for $800 CAD.

3 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀ i n s i d e

Collections 5 Inside / Outside 6 A Camera Moves 7 Why Pure Abstraction? 8 Method 9 History 13 3 Articles 15 Artificial Lights 17 A Pretense of Abstraction 23 Dark Is Outside 25 Evolution of Portraiture 38 Homage 43 Jeff Wall, Milk 53 too museums 57 MoMA, NY Tate Modern, UK Nature Movement 63 Extinction 70 Peter Galassi 85 Drawing 93 Seeing 106 Similar 113 Pixels 118 Street Lights 130 Index 164

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Collections — 11,000 Images

█ Photographs (over 750 prints) █ Achievements

UNITED STATES Born – Windsor, ON, Canada, 1944 1. Univ. of the Arts, Philadelphia (15 prints) Grants – $300,000.00 2. Eastern New Mexico University (15) Education – BSc Wildlife Biology 3. Kent State University, OH (45) Exhibitions – 30 4. The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Initiated – The annual Speed River cleanup Michigan State University (15) in Guelph, Ontario; now in its 40th year 5. University of Maryland (45) Wild Plants of Winnipeg – 35 online 6. SUNY, Gibson Gallery, Potsdam, NY (45) Published – The first journal article on the natural history of the Nodding Trillium 7. Univ. of Michigan Museum of Art (15) 8. Montclair State University, NJ (45) EBOOKS – all are available from Tom as 9. Six private collections (192) PDFs Abstract Photography, Which Way Is Up? CANADA Photography Traditions 10. University of Manitoba (45) Gadwall, A Natural History 11. Health Sciences Centre, Winnipeg (9) The American Crow, Naturally 12. St. Joseph’s Health Care, London (8) The Chipping Sparrow, Its Natural History 13. Four private collections (177) PAPER BOOKS HUNGARY 620 Wild Plants of North America Pure Abstract Photography; The Creative 14. Hungarian Museum of Photography (30) Moment, out in print, get by ILL Abstract Photography, Which Way Is Up? JAPAN 15. Private collection (45)

ENGLAND 16. Private collection (46 prints)

█ Botanical Drawings

CANADA Canadian Museum of Nature, Ottawa (10,000 images)

UNITED STATES Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, Pittsburgh, PA (500 images) For Many Reasons, 1982. I gain more inspiration and courage from abstract painters than from any still photographer, alive or dead. This pure abstract photograph is a straight print from one 35 mm negative. – TR

5 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀ Inside / Outside

his is a book on lens-based, important to me, in a way I can’t really explain. pure abstract photography. The Using a camera (like a pencil) as a tool for title may suggest photographs drawing was a natural progression in my T taken inside buildings versus in a personal ecology and evolution. FIRST—A still landscape. This is one possibility. camera was replaced by a moving camera. A hand-held camera is an extension of my arms, The correct interpretation, however, involves less so my eyes. SECOND—I began taking the BOX, you know the one we usually think photographs at night using photons emanating inside of, or rarely outside of. In fact, this from colored, stationary lights along the book presents how innovative, outside-the-box boulevard. The sacred 3 – Lights, Darkness, thinking in photography looks. and Movements were woven into challenging pictorial fabrics. Let’s begin by defining what a photograph is. A still photograph (usually richly-detailed) shows This fundamental shift in how a lens-based a variety of flora, fauna, and things captured photograph looks (abstract) and acts (always by holding a camera very still and letting the as art), is the expected result from someone lenses absorb reflected light (daylight or studio) who changes the still habit. The question (what to make an image. It is the industry’s standard does a photograph represent?) remains intact; (habit). Everybody takes still photographs, the answer, however, has changed. including me. If you watch photographers at work, they are aways standing still and Some members of the still community have to looking through a still viewfinder to compose start developing this new habit. Gallery walls a picture before pressing the button. Stills showing abstract photographs among abstract are collected and shown in art museums paintings have to become widespread. When it and commercial galleries. Online, watch the comes to practical imagery, the documentary 12-minute Ted Talks by Paul Rulkens on why majority remains obligatory, but not quite so the majority is usually unexceptional when forceful in the fine art category. it comes to high-performance photography (ie fine art) https://www.youtube.com/ till photography has hit a wall. It is watch?v=VNGFep6rncY&t=221s repetitive, and the largest form of visual pollution on the planet. Viewfinder vision If you take photographs outside-the-box, then Sis rampant throughout the medium. Cultural your images must be experimental. This too is and economic boundaries, and daily habits worn out, in-the-box thinking. I don’t regard my prevent curators from showing anything truly pure abstractions as experimental. For 40 years outside the box. And the box they think and I have considered them to be FINE ART. operate in is quite small, about the size of a camera. Curators are copycats. They, along Drawing with a camera quickly became my new with institutional standards, control the habits habit in the early 1980s. So how did I manage of a still photographic community with millions to break the old-fashioned, still photographic of participants. ♣ habit. In my 30s, I realized movement was

6 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀ s A Camera M o v e

his is a 16 x 12 inch free ebook on my Pure Abstract Photography (PAP). In 1981 I began T this alternative style to still photography while maintaining the basic framework of using light and a camera to create images. Through the abandonment of reflected light, I was able to eliminate much of the visually repetitive information that burdens richly-detailed still photographs. The documentation style, in all its many flavors, was jettisoned in favor of Art. Is pure abstract photography the artistic limit of lens-based photography? Time and your consideration will tell. My style of image making is NOT experimental. It reveals my vision of nature and myself. Everything is moving, including my camera. ♣

Upper Left, 1985. – TR An early pure abstract photograph easily printed from one 35 mm negative.

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Why Pure Abstraction? Human anticipation is quite powerful. We count on recognizing the content of a 2-D photograph A cheap, quick answer as to why I create pure as one of its essential characteristics. When abstraction is because Jeff Wall doesn’t. we don’t see items we recognize, we tend to label the work experimental and quickly move iberty and perceptual curiosity are on to the next book or photo. My goal has primary ingredients contributing to the always been to provide stylistic diversity to process – freedom of movement for a complete the medium. The next move is up to camera, the medium, and myself. By curators. They have to catch up to artists like Lreworking the camera I was able to answer one me creating new styles and languages. persistent question. What do pure abstract photographs look like? Answering that With a bit of historical comedy, camera- question with this book revealed another frame less images are accepted more than my pure of visual reference with more possibilities for abstractions created with a camera. http:// critics, curators, artists, collectors, and visitors www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/c/camera- to galleries. Would accepting my level and style less-photography-techniques/ of pure abstraction make the photographic community healthier and happier? I believe so. Everything comes from nature, including It certainly would add a new visual language all the images produced by artists. None and look, and that is always a dynamic, of the images in this book are new. Our welcomed addition to any house. evolution is evidence. ♣

New Leaves, 2002. A pure abstract photograph can be built of layers from different lights, much like a painting. There is a beginning and an end to this image. It is a drawing. – TR

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Method horns, screeching tires, homeless drug users, prostitutes, curious people asking odd The camera moves (hand gestures) and the questions about my behavior, etc. People (one light is stationary. This is the how of pure a self-proclaimed gangster) wanted me to take abstract photography. Furthermore, the lights his picture. I declined. are artificial – colored neon and incandescent. Used mainly for advertisements along city suitable image rarely materializes during streets at night, I re-purposed their photons. In A the first 10 minutes on the street. Like a personal way, my art is not about abstraction, other artists in various media, once I enter but a combination of ideas, values, and insights the zone, stop thinking, and begin moving on using a camera with our light. subconsciously, the edges begin to tear away. Some of my first attempts at concentrated my 30s I became aware of my drawing with a camera in the early 1980s led fascination with movement. to a flow of successful gestures which I exhibit Watching dancers – ballet, and continue to admire today. contemporary, or exotic, enthralled me. Attending a ballet When I first saw a light-box-enhanced still Inor contemporary dance, I stare at arm and photograph by Jeff Wall, radiating like a minor hand movements and try to incorporate similar star on a gallery’s wall, I thought it would be patterns when drawing with a hand-held transformative to create a pure abstraction by camera at night along the streets. drawing my camera along the edges of the box.

Half an hour after sunset I decided to flex the Pure abstractions represent a hand-drawn artistic muscle of the medium. My routine is process, not the snapshot of a significant to walk through the well-lit darkness of busy event. When creating my images, I don’t look city streets where artificial lights cast multi- through the viewfinder. It is unnecessary and directional grey shadows. An orangish glow impossible since the camera is held away envelops me. I experience urban lights by from my body and moving at various speeds looking at their arrangements, colors and and angles. Anti-stills are organic, unalloyed, shapes for their potential as art. Approaching a without borders or memory. They save the shop’s window or glowing advertisement, medium from endless repetition. I analyze colors and boundaries, then decide how to move. Different shapes of lights olding and drawing with a camera is prescribe different movements. For example, not a precise art, such as making a slow sweeping actions are usually required pen-and-ink drawing of a wildflower. along the edges of a wide illuminated sign. The shape, size and weight of a Energetic drawing works best when facing Hcamera both help and hinder my movements. clusters or strings of small or thin lights. Gravity plays with me. Although some of the Sometimes my left hand passes in front of the b&w images may resemble photograms or lens, momentarily breaking the flow of light, even x-rays (so I’ve been told), they are all allowing me to add a second or third layer created with different movements of a camera. of light. My average exposure is about three A digital camera immediately reveals my seconds. My average work period is 2–3 hours nocturnal gestures. If I like what I see, I create per night. By then my stage is exhausted. more images at the site to form a cohesive group of pure abstractions – for example, An The nightly habitat is alive with a mixture of Appropriate Green (page 10). ♣ shouts, sirens of emergency vehicles, honking

9 Tom Reaume An Appropriate Green, 2010. Seven pure abstract photographs. Green is not a common color of artificial light along city streets. – TR Similar to Glissement by David Diao in 1984. Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Obsessive Motion, 2003. – TR A layered look adds a mysterious appeal to any photograph.

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Image X, 2013. – TR A layered, messy look defines some of my best work. Such a look is very painterly and sublime. It relieves the tension in any viewer.

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History by Cig Harvey, (Harper’s Magazine, May 2019, p 13) certainly looks abstract, but isn’t. It did When I began creating lens-based pure however, win her the Virginia Prize in 2018. abstract photographs in the early 1980s much Most of her still photographs deal with daily of the debate was concerned with the status scenes and people in the common, traditional of still photography as a fine art. That debate style. https://loeildelaphotographie.com/ continues to this day. I thought my abstractions en/cig-harvey-laureate-of-the-2018-virginia- would be liberating for prize/ the medium, but it turned out to be a style the still Still photography is an photographic community instantaneous, fact- didn’t welcome. Their gathering methodology. goal, I presume, was to It has been since its have a still photograph beginning in 1839 and accepted as art on a continues to maintain par with painting. What this documentary status. prevents this, I believe, It records where the lens is the fact that millions of is pointing and what people carry image-making information it inhales electronic devices and through reflected light, can take a richly-detailed usually in rich detail, still photograph anywhere. which seems to be Lens-based images on quite important to most the web don’t look any curators. As long as the different stylistically from lens is in focus, rich what one sees during a details are a given. It visit to an art museum. takes little skill to focus a Some are much better. camera.

bstraction in still photography began Today, we have revisited an old perspective by with a false identify, which continues using drones to take aerial views, which humans A today. Paul Strand took photographs in always find fascinating. Birds, not so much. You 1916 of porch railings, and a group of bowls. recall Nadar Elevating Photography to Art, an Both images were enhanced by shadows. often reproduced lithograph, (this page) in the For some unknown reason, Alfred Stieglitz, collection of the Brooklyn Museum by Honoré a prominent gallery owner, writer and still Daumier, (Nadar with his camera over Paris photographer in New York City, labeled these in a balloon), appeared in Le Boulevard, 25 two images by Strand “abstract”. Why? See May 1862, indicating the idea of aerial imagery Tate’s video at https://vimeo.com/259246473 came quickly to still photographers. https:// (time 13:15). And so began the false branding en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadar of some realistic images as so-called “abstract” photography. Edward Burtynsky continues this tradition. His show of many aerials titled Anthropocene, Just because a still photograph looks like an September 2018 – January 2019, was held abstract image, doesn’t mean it is one. For at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. His instance, the image Emily in the Greenhouse large images are beautiful documents of our

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modifications of landscapes on this tiny planet. photographs. Almost all are still photographs, When there is no horizon in his images, some either found or staged, grounded in everyday appear “abstract” until objects are recognized reality. Yet books (The Edge of Vision: The Rise or mentioned in the caption. Scale of size of Abstraction in Photography, by Lyle Rexer is always a mystery with aerials. The use of in 2013) and a video at (https://www.youtube. drones to take still photographs from above com/watch?v=qDYBJV4ylzw) continue to is widespread. In the August 2019 issue of tout these images as “abstract” photography. National Geographic magazine, on page 142, Why? Is still photography trying to keep up Olivier Apicella, using a drone, took a still with the advent of abstract painting initiated photograph of a farmer spraying water over by a Swedish woman, Hilma af Klint, in 1906? rows of plants in Sa Dec, Vietnam. (1) This was 10 years before the first mention of “abstraction” appeared in the title of a still I am always amazed at what curators, photograph. Her new style was quickly followed academics, and critics label as abstract by the boys – Wassily Kandinsky, František Kupka, and Robert Delaunay, among others. ♣

⁓ 1) The Guggenheim Museum in New York held Klint’s first solo American show in the city Space Baby, 1982. – TR from 12 October 2018 to 23 April 2019. View her art at https://www.guggenheim.org/ A full moon hanging in the receding night sky. exhibition/hilma-af-klint

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3 Articles so many types of “abstract” photography exist. Does anyone know how the 180-year history of It is always a pleasure to find academic photography got so cluttered with so many fake articles on “abstract” photography published “abstract” images? Now that would make an online. Jelna Stojković wrote Vision Without interesting paper on human psychology and the the Eye: Following the Material of Abstract need to fit in, go with the herd, and control how Photography http://www.jstor.org/stable/j. people think. ctv5vddc3.4 for us to ponder and analyze (2). She briefly describes three b&w “abstract” To begin, Costello defines what a photograph images by Taisuke Koyama, James Welling, is, so it can be separated from what an and Nihal Yesil. What makes her paper unique “abstract” photograph is. Eventually, he is the background she provides on materials gives bizarre and new names (to me) of used by the three artists – cellophane, several nebulous abstractions, such as Proto, aluminum foil, and PVC (polyvinyl chloride) Faux, Constructed Faux, Weak and Strong, plastic. Let me explain. The first artist used while admitting there is overlap between two scanners to make images with cellophane. his categories. His use of faux is telling. I won’t pursue his work any further. Welling Remarkably, no images decorate his useless explored aluminum foil for about 7 months, article as examples. All his categories involve which is, I speculate, longer than anyone in the still camera’s recording of a fragment of the history of still photography. His imagery, something in front of it. close-up and cropped, some staged, reminds me of Aaron Siskind’s earlier close-ups of Costello, “Abstract in art is typically peeling paint and streaks of black road tar. One eliminative or reductive: it removes features begets the other. The technique is similar; only deemed inessential to something’s continued the subject matter has changed. Nihal Yesil existence as an entity of a given kind.” takes still pictures of florescent light reflecting off sheets of PVC. None of the three still For my pure abstract drawings, I jettison photographs are pure abstractions. They offer everything that makes a still photographic only a pretense. They are cliches—hardly the image so ordinary. Direct light alone, in its real thing, in a painterly, or any context. varied forms and colors, with no sense of scale, memory, or context, entertains my viewers. A SECOND online paper worth discussing is The THIRD adventure into abstract by Diarmuid Costello of Warwick University, photography is courtesy of Andrew Fisher. His UK. What is Abstraction in Photography? On the Scales of Photographic Abstraction was published in October 2018 in The appeared in Photographies, May 2016. He British Journal of Aesthetics https:// explored three sets of variations of scales academic.oup.com/bjaesthetics/ dealing with abstraction in photography. His article/58/4/385/5129096 Costello informs text is disturbing complex and useless to my us there is confusion about what is abstract in photography. No shit? A disparate jumble is another way to describe this intellectual mess. I believe too many zealous curators, ⁓ academics, and critics have compounded (2) Stojković, J. 2018. Vision Without the Eye: the problem by labeling far to many ordinary Following the Material of Abstract Photography. In Pavoni A., Mandic D., Nirta C., & Philippopoulos- still photographs “abstract”. Unfortunately, Mihalopoulos A. (Eds.), See (pp. 39-70). University of Costello does not delve into the reasons why Westminster Press. London

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case. Like the previous two, he deals with He invokes ideas of “Abstract Photography” still photographs trying, or is it hoping, to be by Gottfried Jäger (3) dealing with a different “abstract” and so more artistic. He talks about photography that refers only to itself with the control of scale to help us understand the nothing of importance outside of the picture. complex nature of abstraction in photography. Two others, Hein Gravenhorst and Herbert What he and the other two above haven’t Franke create images this way. Another writer asked and answered is why abstraction in Fisher mentions is professor Lambert Wiesing, photography has become so complex. They (4) who informs, “...every abstraction always never provide an introduction to their articles leads to an exhibition of what is deemed that attempts to explain why the academic essential; every abstracting turning away is definitions of abstract are so confusing and linked to a visualizing turn toward.” messy. They try to explain what we have in front of us and in so doing make matters worse. In his conclusion, Fisher, “Thinking about And like the others, he deals with lens-based photography and abstraction in terms of scale still photographs, although that distinction is has complicated the meaning of the latter term never mentioned, but taken for granted by me. considerably.” Isn’t that wonderful.

Fisher’s paper is undecorated with any still Let’s ignore Fisher’s ridiculous paper on scales imagery. Readers cannot visualize his ideas and in “abstract” photography? ♣ the three scales he talks about, and how they refer to abstraction. Is my confusion his?

A Time of Pink, 2005. –TR A pure abstract photograph created by drawing with a hand- held camera. The camera is moving; the lights are stationary.

⁓ (3) Jäger, G. 2003. “Abstract Photography.” Rethinking Be daring, be different, be impractical, be Photography I & II: Narration and New Reduction in Photography. anything that will assert integrity of purpose Ed. Ruth Horak. Salzburg: Fotohof Edition, 162–195. Print. and imaginative vision against the play-it- safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the (4) Wiesing, L. 2010.“What Could ‘Abstract Photography’ Be?” Artificial Presence: Philosophical Studies in Image Theory. Trans. slaves of the ordinary. Nils F. Schott. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 60–79. Print. – Cecil Beaton, artist

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Artificial Lights

The strength of photography combines a camera with light (any light) to make an image (any image). Rudi Stern’s book, The New Let There Be Neon, (HN Abrams, 1988, 160 pages) provides a great picture story of the history of the medium upon which I depend for my art. To begin, the scientist Georges Claude invented public neon lighting in the early 1900s. The first neon signs imported into North America in 1924 “stopped traffic in downtown Los Angeles.” Artificial light lifted us out of a half darkness and set the cornerstone for pure abstract photography to evolve. Configurations of artificial lights (letters, numbers) in a window Neon Nails, 2019. determine how I draw with my The various sizes, colors and shapes of neon camera. ♣ . lights result in different looking images that fill this book. – TR

White Over Red, 2014. Anti-stills allows me to build layers of colored light, like an abstract painter adds layers of paint to her creation. This is what partly separates my images from stills by Jeff Wall and the other museum hotshots. – TR

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So Little Red, 2005. A pure abstract photograph with no indication of the source of light or its place in time. Conveying no memories, it is a complete transformation into art. –TR

18 Tom Reaume Nocturnal Orbits, 2003. – TR Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Mostly White, 2007. A flat, lens-based photograph created at night shows richly-detailed white plus a dash of color and form in one corner. One of my favorites. – TR Ray Mead, All We Can See, 1981, oil. Like this photograph, Mead has concentrated his significant colored forms along one margin of his painting. Iris Nowell, 2010. Painters Eleven: The Wild Ones of Canadian Art, Douglas & McIntyre, Vancouver.

20 Tom Reaume African Evening, 1982. – TR Another favorite. The thin grey bands are due to the alternating electrical current. A Left-handed Structure, 1994. – TR A confusing title perfectly suited to this mysterious drawing. Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

A Pretense of Abstraction his vortographs are not pure abstractions, his imagery is generally included in books ll photographic pictures are fake; some on historical photography, or “abstract” more than others. All are abstract; some photography in particular. Once his short- moreA than others. Photographers naturally lived affair was over, Coburn quickly returned belong to groups with similar ideas, goals, to ordinary pictures with easily recognized and subject matter, which they try to force on subjects. photographers making images unlike theirs. Do it my way is the rallying cry of each group. Everything is connected and moving. Early Pictorialism and then Group f64 were especially still photographic practices in the late 1880s controlling, for a brief time. We always measure captured motion via two broad, lens-based and compartmentalize every photograph, to fit methods. Étienne-Jules Marey and Georges a category and style. The activist Marty Rubin Demeny attached lights to people to follow told us – What they should remember is that their movements on film. More recently, ideas stand in the corner and laugh while we images by Pablo Picasso https://www. fight over them. youtube.com/watch?v=X-i9eqlRzks and Barbara Morgan and Vicki DaSilva https:// he snapshot aesthetic has defined lightpaintingphotography.com/light- photography since its public painting-artist/featured-artist-2/vicki- inception around 1840. Within dasilva/ among others, were drawn with photography’s short history there variously shaped hand-held lights in front have always been perturbations of a still camera on a tripod. The musician ofT varying lengths by some practitioners as and visual artist Morgan Fisher draws with they tried to leave the ground and ascend the a camera, or with light in front of a still Tree of Art. Four decades of Pictorialism, from camera. He attains “a balancing act out there about 1885 to 1925 generated still photographs on the high tightrope between chaos and garnished with a blurry patina and inherent control.” http://morganfisherart.com/ softness (my favorite style). Then, some of the influential Pictorialists such The still photographic community treats as Ansel Adams and Alfred their photographs as elemental and Stieglitz simply changed conclusive, with no other form possible. their minds and returned The kids are eager to copy Eve’s & Adam’s to sharp, still photography. style to please curators and judges of This new precise style, they contests. Is there room for new stylistic felt, fit in with the modern directions? Of course, but first curators industrial era (Wikipedia). Fine must liberate themselves from their own art photography is based on stagnant illusions, and abandon biases in their favor. Then photography will opinions and fashions. I like this A Red Apple, red apple more than that green 2019. – TR become more democratic, open, and apple, at least for today. diversified. A new ontology will emerge. Read Sunny Yeung’s June 2020 lvin L Coburn attached three paper, Photographer as a New mirrors to the end of a lens Sisyphus at https://mail.google. and took 18 still pictures com/mail/u/0/?tab=rm&ogbl#inbox/ termed vortographs during one FMfcgxwJWhtvltddbPDsKHZVrTqSCTDz ♣ month in 1917. Even though

A 23 Tom Reaume Dorsal Aspect, 2009. Gestures with a hand-held camera create unexpected and delicious abstractions which free the medium from its stifling stilliness. – TR

From pure abstraction to high realism, a camera is capable of both styles when used with two different strategies, depending on what you wish the outcome to look like and say.

Canada Geese preparing to land, 2018. – TR Dark is Outside 1–6 Dark is Outside 7–11 Dark is Outside # 12, 2013. – TR

he above cluster of 12 he 12 can be hung in pairs, anti-still photographs floor to ceiling, in a museum. was created in Toronto at TOne curator described each Tnight using long narrow white as a corridor, even though it is lights flush with the ground as fruitless to try to identify my my source. A digital camera images as something in the provides a quick view. Because everyday. Accepting them as I was pleased with the results pure abstractions isn’t quite yet of my first gestures, I continued possible among the glitterati. ♣ using the lights to create a group of 12 pure abstractions. Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Black Through White, 2004. Arrangement variable. – TR

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Moonrise, 1993. – TR

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Along The Boulevard, 1982. A flick of the wrist. – TR

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The Unfolding, 1983. In spring the buds are silently unfolding into leaves and flowers. All of this involves movement which most of us are unaware is happening around us. We are not observers of subtle movements by plants. – TR

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Consequential, 2013. A soft image like a watercolor wash. – TR

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Your Undivided Attention, 2012. – TR

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Near The Entrance, 2013. Movement makes everything grow, including photography. – TR

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My Brief Regret x 3, 2012. – TR

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March Of The Curators, 1984. Little divergent thinking in the house. – TR

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Seated, 1983. – TR

37 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀ Evolution of Portraiture In Photography, 1905–2009

e have seen hundreds of portraits of people and animals, both as W paintings and still photographs. The Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh comes to mind. To the south, Annie Leibovitz, Diane Arbus, and Cindy Sherman occupy the museums’ walls.

I too enjoy creating portraits of cultural icons. Three pure abstract portraits of God follow this page. The portrait of Wonder Woman below is fictitious of course, at least when matching the title and image. Like the titles of paintings by René Magritte, some of my titles get you thinking about the role of captions in the various genres of photography. ♣

Shows As He Goes, c. 1905. Portrait of a First Nation’s man by Edward Curtis, 1868–1952, a still photographer. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Edward Curtis Collection, [reproduction number, LC-USZ62-90145] in the public domain, © expired. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/

Wonder Woman, 2009. A pure abstract photographic portrait. As soon as I saw this colored image on my monitor I thought of Wonder Woman as a suitable title. – TR

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God Laughing, 2001. Is this the first photographic portrait of God? When displayed in a shop’s window, a passer-by, after viewing it, went inside and told the shopkeeper it could not be a photograph. The viewer had nothing in his million- image baggage to compare it to. Most curators face a similar challenge. – TR

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Portrait Of God Spinning, 1996. Printed from one 35 mm negative without cropping or manipulation. – TR

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God Thinking, 2002. – TR

41 Tom Reaume Without Yellow There Is No God, 2009. Without the underlying layer of white, this image of gestures would be of no consequence. Stephen Maine’s - HP13-1113, in 2013 is the perfect acrylic painting to harmonize with this photograph. – TR Pure Abstract Photography ⁀ Homage

nce you reach the level of an abstract photograph should look and be creativity demanded by lens- defined. O based pure abstraction, taking a still photograph is like finishing As expected, some of my anti-still photographs fifth in a 5-horse race. From bear a resemblance to images by some abstract Wikipedia, Lyrical Abstraction (personal painters. To ease you into this short section, expression) is perhaps the best designation for I began on page 44 with one I did in homage my style of photographic art. to Jeff Wall, one of Canada’s “influential” still photographers. I acknowledged his cloudless My inspiration comes from abstract painters blue skies just to cast a shadow on his overly- such as the four presented below. Lens- hyped, richly-detailed snapshots. My homage based still photographers, dead or alive, to Wall is a minimalistic photograph with two especially those who pretend to be “abstract” small patches of blue separated by a vast photographers, or whom critics, editors, and expanse of whiteness (a cloud?). There is curators call “abstract” photographers, only hardly any white in Wall’s snapshots. I wonder get in the way of expanding and completing why? Doesn’t his camera have a program which photography. Still photographers can’t create automatically creates pure abstraction? Mine pure abstract pictures. I wish they would stop does. It’s called my hand. ♣ trying. They only add to the confusion of how

Ethel Schwabacher, Serge Poliakoff, Hilma af Klint, Richard Diebenkorn, Warm Rain I, 1959, oil on Composition grise et Detio största, nr 3. Ocean Park No. 67, 1973, canvas. Wikipedia rouge, 1964, oil on canvas. Ynglingaåldern. Ur oil on canvas. Wikipedia Wikipedia Grupp 4, 1907. Wikipedia

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Homage to Jeff Wall, 2004. This sensuous photograph pushes Wall’s images to their logical conclusion. It only seemed fair to use a lot of richly-detailed white when paying homage to Wall’s “masterpieces”. Reflected light disappears with Wall and direct light fills my night. – TR

44 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Homage to Turner (a seascape), 2012. The gossamer colors recall JMW Turner’s expressive seascapes with clouds. In botanical terms, I am reminded of a filmy palea, the upper bract in the flower of grasses. – TR

45 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Homage to Rothko, 2002. n ordinary painter, Mark Rothko Like Rothko’s painting, No. 10, in evolved into his rectangular, color 1957, there are areas in both images A field phase, where he remained. that are not sharply defined (in focus). Staid curators at The Museum of Modern As a work of fine art, this is perfectly Art in NYC did little to welcome American acceptable, even expected, in a pure painters pushing the edges further out to abstract photograph. – TR sea. They preferred the safe shoreline of European art. Eventually, collectors and curators woke up and learned to appreciate Rothko’s art. https://www.khanacademy. ⁓ org/humanities/art-1010/post-war- C Rothko, J Bishop and JM Spring, 2017. Rothko: Color american-art/abex/v/moma-painting- Field Paintings, Chronicle Books, San Francisco, CA technique-rothko

46 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Homage to Bernd & Hilla Becher, 2009. The Bechers’ gray solemn water towers are replaced by a dazzling gesture of light. – TR

47 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Homage To The Futurists, 1984. – TR

48 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Homage to Motherwell, 2005. – TR This image immediately reminded me of Robert Motherwell’s, Elegy to the Spanish Republic, 110, a series of paintings begun in 1965 and completed in 1967. https://www.guggenheim.org/ artwork/3047

49 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Homage to Motherwell, 1986. – TR

50 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Homage To The Snapshot, 1986. – TR

51 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Homage to Duchamp – Nude Ascending To Heaven, 1985. – TR My drawing acknowledges Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, a 1912 painting by Marcel Duchamp. The art hanging committee objected to Duchamp’s work. It had “too much of a literary title”, and “one doesn’t paint a nude descending a staircase, that’s ridiculous... a nude should be respected”. (Wikipedia) https://philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/51449.html

52 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Jeff Wall, Milk

uch to the delight of curators weakest means of capturing and printing images. of still photography, Jeff Wall It finally was ousted by pixels, a faster plastic has given them a richly-detailed method suited to the computer / satellite age. M image, Milk, (1984) with layered Wall, because of his self-imposed limitation interpretations. Mine will have a from using a large still camera, omits the liquid botanical slant. Let’s begin. intelligence of the photographer, the “immersion in the incalculable.” With my methodology, I Milk, at https://www.moma.org/collection/ combine flowing movements from the liquid works/93456 is a cliché of an angry young human body with a dry dead camera. I am the man, one of many in any city. Is Milk a modern, turbulent milk. Allowed to dance, a camera, like aggressive response to a calm, The Milkmaid, milk, forms unrepeatable natural patterns. in 1657–8, by Johannes Vermeer? Wall’s model is perched on the sidewalk like an injured, he way I see it, the angry man’s presence, flightless bird. This distraught person is giving although foreboding, is softened by the rather than taking. His angular body forms a green, roundish shrub occupying the lower triangle, a popular and historical compositional Tleft of Wall’s snapshot, which nicely balances the tool, which Pablo Picasso used in Guernica, an harsh angular man. It may even flower and bear unknown artist in the 17th century for, Madonna fruit. He is on a concrete sidewalk, the shrub has with Child, and Christians in their fabricated its roots embedded in nourishing soil. The man trinity ▲, the 3 for 1 sale. His angry bare left does too, but his connection is less apparent, arm, ending in a fist, forms a horizontal line perhaps even to him. This lack of awareness may from which the spray of milk is ejected vertically be responsible for the man’s aggravation with into the polluted urban air. A high shutter speed himself in his particular subculture in a much clarifies all the droplets of the liquid which we broader “progressive” society. find fascinating. Wall’s still photograph is a cityscape, where hard Social outsiders make good copy. A 2-D surfaces abound, with 90º angles everywhere, snapshot of an Other, hanging in a status-laden save for the rounded softness of green leaves gallery allows comfortable, well-fed and clothed manufacturing food for the shrub. Casting a dark visitors, feigning artistic interest, to stare at the shadow towards the man, it reinforces his black image of such a person, but relieved they have pants and their shadows. Is it an evening or police to protect them from his intrusions. The morning shadow? It matters to the plant. brick wall behind him sees to that. The vertical dark wall shadow separating the Jeff Wall, (so I’ve read), in his short essay actor and the real shrub is a narrow monolith, “Photography and Liquid Intelligence” uses anchoring the left side of the still photograph. Its this staged photograph, Milk, as a temptation only movement is due to the spinning earth as in to consider the dry digital takeover from a wet my Portrait Of God Spinning (page 40). ♣ darkroom. For me, these two procedures are no more than technical artifacts, in spite of the “importance” given to this evolution (wet to dry) ⁓ by some academics publishing their gibberish Jeff Wall, “Photography and Liquid in high-status journals. Film was our first and Intelligence”, Catalogue Raisonne 1978–2004, T. Vischer and H. Naef, (eds) (Switzerland: Schaulager, 2005), p 439–440.

53 Tom Reaume Imagine This, 2005. – TR Opening White, 2001. – TR The dance of life is as mysterious as the appearance of this image out of the warm night air. Three x Two, 2005. – TR Pure Abstract Photography ⁀ too museums

useum shows about “abstract” Although six divisions of abstract photography photography occur about once are listed, the “techniques and devices are M in a lifetime. They are a lot of not new.” Three general categories were – work and highly edited. “photographers who limit themselves to the experimental or avant-garde; occasional The “abstract” photographs on walls of art abstractions produced as a stimulating museums are often puzzling. Some are clearly exercise; and the ‘accidental’ abstraction not abstract, while others may be somewhat in which reportage is transformed through a abstract once the process of their birth is strong sense of design”. http://moma.org/ explained by the artist. Images made without a d/c/press_releases/W1siZiIsIjMyNjE4MiJdXQ. camera don’t interest me. I’ve only made a few pdf?sha=62eb07af87b1fcea scientific photograms of bones for my book on the natural history of the American Crow. Tate Modern, UK

MoMA, New York bout 60 years after the MoMA show, over the summer of 2018, a second 1960, Grace Mayer and Kathleen large museum exhibition, Shape of Haven at the Museum of Modern Art Light: 100 years of Photography in New York City co-directed The andA Abstract Art, at the Tate Modern, UK, InSense of Abstraction, a large show of 300 spawned a 224-page catalogue which I “abstract” photographs. https://www.moma. purchased. Curators at the Tate calibrated 12 org/calendar/exhibitions/3366 The title is divisions of “abstraction”. Seven divisions were self-explanatory. On a snowy-white wall, every- of images made without a camera. Visitors day captions explained what appeared to be waded through a chronology (1910 to the “abstractions”. For example: Garage Door, present) of 400 (mostly b&w) images by over 1959 by Oscar Bailey; and Weeds,1957 by 70 artists. The “abstractions” in the show Harry Callahan. were sometimes paired with similar-looking abstract paintings by Wyndham Lewis, Piet The American critic Andy Grundberg described Mondrian and Jackson Pollock, among others. the above “abstract” imagery at the MoMA, Photographs greatly outnumbered paintings. “Their images, by being simultaneously of the world and apart from it, seemed to exemplify Shoair Mavlian, one of three curators of [still] photography’s aspirations as a form the show, spoke in an online 54-minute of art. Today, of course, these attempts at video vimeo.com/259246473 about the creating an abstract photography wear only the Shape of Light. In her presentation, Mavlian shredded rags of their original convictions.” showed (time 13:15) the first two b&w still photographs, in 1915 by Paul Strand, A press release for the show at the MoMA considered “abstract.” They were definitely not mentioned 75 contributing photographers. abstract. The content was easily recognized.

57 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

I can speculate trend-setting still photographers and curators felt the need to jog alongside abstract painters. In 1915, as today, debates concerning the abstract nature of still photography continue. When “experts” in an art museum call a still photograph “abstract”, what does that mean? How should we react? Within the dialogue on photography, why would curators at the Tate, or anyone, maintain this senseless history lacking authenticity for a medium known for its “realism” and “facticity?”

ome of the more amusing and critical online reviews of Shape of Light by local critics in London are worth Sreading. MIchael Glover of The Independent (“An absurdly over-large, tediously repetitive exhibition of distorted photographs”) and Hettie Judah of iNews The Essential Daily Briefing, (“By about halfway round I actually felt faint. I longed for some colour, some mess: a face, even. It was just all so…tasteful.”).

NOTE – The catalogue for the Shape of Light displayed no abstract images like mine.

I decided to test the temperature of the water at the Tate. I suggested their Acquisition Committee purchase 6 of my colored anti- stills, including God Laughing, to add diversity to their young and growing collection of still photographs. A week later they sent a negative email. I guess curatorial / institutional rules were in place to keep my fine art photographs After Ansel Adams, 1985. – TR from entering their very stilly collection. The Its messy appearance resembles water at the Tate was frozen solid. ♣ the painting, Scontro di situazioni n.4, in 1959 by Emilio Vedova. https://artsandculture. google.com/asset/scontro-di- situazioni-n-4-emilio-vedova/ bQG6L0NfOHdpPA?hl=en

58 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Almost Dawn, 1986. – TR Resembles Night Wing by Anne Truitt 1972–1978. https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/night-wing-anne- truitt/pwHyzteLmP32Gg?hl=en

59 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Thursday Morning, 2008. – TR

60 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Friday Morning, 2008. – TR

61 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Wednesday Morning, 2008. A yellow cloud fills the sky this morning, and no one knows what to do. – TR

62 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀ Nature Movement

ature entertains us in a lavish youtube.com/watch?v=A26V-Y0RtZU where display of movements. Some he explains how he gets hundreds of colored N motions are obvious – rain, swirls. I despise swirls. The 10,000 pencil- clouds, birds, people. Some are and-ink botanical drawings I did over 10 years less obvious – opening of the for my 780-page botanical book indicate a bud of a flower, or molting of a crow’s feather. particular and practical level of hand control Others are invisible – subatomic particles and awareness of natural forms – useful (Neutrinos) passing through the Earth and us, attributes when manipulating a camera by hand wind and sound, ideas migrating away from and editing photographs. the norm, and movement of our galaxy in space. till photography provides the context for understanding anti- I am seduced by nature through its gestures. still photography. Both styles are interwoven through the human body Movement saturates our lives. Movement is Sand intellect. They operate like words in a the way of pure abstraction. In today’s world dictionary to define each other. In our science- we are moving faster and in more ways than layered culture, documentary images are the ever before. Online, watch the gymnast Simone norm. In our art-based culture, abstractions Biles, or Karine Ruby on a snowboard, or present another reality. The two styles of Sofia Bogdanova in the roller blade freestyle photography must exist because creativity, slalom. Movement is so varied and real; order, and play define us. Motivation and stillness is the illusion. A moving camera fits methodology (a camera and light) make perfectly into our current fast-paced culture. the two styles fraternal twins with different I strive to expand the consciousness of personalities. Lens-based photography has photography by altering its complexion and to be re-understood. Its look, history, and language. My lens-based photographs co- meaning have changed for the better. ♣ operate with Nature, reminding you of its many linkages.

An anti-still photograph is born from more control than simply twirling and twisting light in front of a still camera, or indulging in camera tossing. Watch a 5-minute video of Germany’s best camera tosser Jens Ludwig at www.

63 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Gray Landscape, 2013. It resembles the gray folds in the button-less white shirt in the oil painting, The Portrait of Alessandro Manzoni by Francesco Hayez in 1874. – TR

64 Tom Reaume Interrupted Landscape, 2013. – TR Morning Mist, 2007. – TR Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Genesis, 2013. – TR

67 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Right Before Dawn, 2013. – TR

68 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

The Beggar, 2008. Ostracized and marginalized, she relies on the good will of society to keep her body and spirit together for another day. – TR Reminds me of PH-235, a painting by Clyfford Still in 1944. https:// collection.clyffordstillmuseum.org/ object/ph-235

69 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

n earthly ritual, extinction extends over more years than any of us can imagine. A Presently, extinction of flora E & fauna is accelerating due to wasteful human activities, including those by the arts community. X

Plants & animals are adjusting to their new paradigm. Arable lands are shrinking, T salt water laps at our doorsteps, and the winds blow a little hotter and stronger. We are at war with ourselves and our I natural surroundings. Only Nature (C-19) can tell us when it is time to slow down. We don’t listen to our own verbal and N visual rhetoric.

This photograph, Extinction, (2008), was created at night in the dark. The huge C amount of richly-detailed white represents millions of wild cultures that have already disappeared during Earth’s lengthy T evolution. Those left reside in a crowded pink corner where humans must share our planet by respecting millions of other I species that have made the long journey. urprisingly, a century before the O advent of Christ, Titus Lucretius Carus, wrote a prophetic book, On the Nature of Things. “The Suniverse was not created for or about N humans. The earth—with its seas and deserts, harsh climate, wild beasts, diseases—was obviously not purpose- built to make our species feel at home. Humans do not occupy the privileged place in existence they imagine for themselves. We have only to look attentively at the world around us to grasp that many of the most intense and poignant experiences of our lives are not exclusive to our species.” ♣

70 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

A Drift of Yellow, 2008. Yellow and white are two visually painful colors to combine. Yet, here they are together on a road trip. – TR

71 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

An Offering, 2010. – TR A pure abstract photograph that reminds me of an Alpha-Pi painting created by Morris Louis around 1960. https://www.metmuseum.org/ toah/works-of-art/67.232/

72 Tom Reaume At The Green Edge, 2006. – TR Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

One of the interesting things about abstract painting is how it continues to feed upon the visible world even as it eschews any conventionalized effort to represent it. – John Dorfman

Form itself, even if completely abstract ... has its own inner sound.” – Wassily Kandinsky

The popularity of abstract art is easily explained, when you consider all art represents reality, and mystery is part of our reality. – Robert Black

Since still photography isn’t very imitative of reality, why not give pure abstract photography a shot at it? – Tom Reaume

74 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Tree, 2010. – TR A 2-D still photograph of a tree shows some branches, leaves, and general form. A pure abstract photograph of a tree presents its nucleus.

75 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Gesture # 44, 2009. A photograph showing co-operation between black and white in an urban landscape. – TR

76 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Come Closer, 1988. – TR

77 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Ambition, Side View, 1985. – TR Similar to the painting, Untitled, by Daniel Senise in 2002, https:// artsandculture.google.com/asset/un- titled-daniel-senise/YgH6yxNUF25HY- w?hl=en

78 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

End of A Creative Day, 1984. – TR

79 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

A Short Cut, 1985. – TR

80 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Cloudburst, 1984. A white cloud in the right sky of Píhuamo Valley, by Dr. Atl, Gerardo Murillo in 1952 resembles the shape of this photograph. – TR

81 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

One Gesture, 1984. – TR Drawing with a camera creates singularities.

82 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

A Secret, 1984. – TR A rewarding gesture of a form that was within me for a long time.

83 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

The Pleasure of 40º, 1986. – TR Gestures are the fundamental building blocks of pure abstract photography. Some striped paintings, such as 28 septembre 1984 by Michel Parmentier in France are similar to this photograph. https://www.wikiart.org/en/michel- parmentier

84 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀ Peter Galassi BEFORE PHOTOGRAPHY — Painting and the Invention of Photography

o accompany a major exhibition in lives we can easily live with and occasionally 1981 at MoMA in New York City, gush over? T Peter Galassi, then Associate Curator of Photography, used People realize a highly-detailed painting takes the book form to examine the much more skill and time to achieve than a invention of photography based on the highly-detailed photograph. Millions of people aesthetic aspect of linear perspective which today own photographic-recording devices. In developed slowly in painting over the centuries, this still swarm, only a tiny fraction would also rather than the “overnight” scientific invention be painters, or have the ability to draw a wild of the camera in the early 1800s. His is an flower in botanically useful detail. So they take academic article which has no interest to most pictures. people that take pictures. He may be right; or wrong. Only a handful of still photographers When I travel by bus and talk to a person care. https://www.moma.org/documents/ beside me, if I mention I am drawing plants moma_catalogue_2267_300296442.pdf for a botanical book, they call me an artist. If I have my camera with me, they ask what is rom my viewpoint, the development of my subject? Being an artist does not enter the still photography stems from a human photographic equation for most people. The drive to easily reproduce 2-D images bewildering writings of curators, professors, of what we see every day, especially and critics in journals and art magazines, do the most engaging and significant not sway or even interest the masses who take Fevents. One of the first demands on early millions of richly-detailed still photographs, photography (1850s) were small realistic photos some of a remarkable nature, each day. Most of people for their own use. In these photos people carry still photos in their phone which perspective was not an issue; detail was. they can share with friends. An image combined Fortunately, fine detail was inherent in a still with verbal enhancement improves our daily photograph from the start. The development communications with our friends and co- of fast lenses, over many decades, to focus workers. reflected light quickly, lead to this visual outcome. From the start, images were used he history of photography doesn’t greatly for social and natural spheres, while others interest me today. Yesterday, I’ve read revealed the mundane. Few still photographs Tdozens of books on still photography and seen passed as FINE ART. about 1 M reproductions. I’ve emerged from this blizzard without finding any photographers When the flattened perspective is perfectly worth emulating. This is because I don’t use a aligned, the colors a drop-dead gorgeous camera as a way of “documenting the world”, match, the subjects and compositions have or “telling a story” in the traditional still all been used, will we be satisfied we have sense. I prefer to create other-worldly images, imparted opinionated human perfection to a each existing on its own pedicel as part of a photograph? Has still photography achieved newly-opened rare inflorescence, and with no anything with a truly artistic point of view, or is reference to the look, perspective, and purpose it simply a false comfortable ideal in our daily of common still photography. ♣

85 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

These two pure abstract photographs are spiritually connected to the painting, Another Storm, in 1963 by Lee Krasner. https://www.artsy. net/artwork/lee-krasner- another-storm

Before and After The Storm, 2008. The night has always been this dramatic. – TR

86 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Under The Arches, 2011. – TR Which Way Is Up? Looking at Saint-Séverin No. 3, a painting of a Gothic church in 1909 by Robert Delaunay may answer that question. https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/1017

87 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

So Little Time, So Much Time, 2008. – TR

88 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Happy Birthday, 2008. – TR

89 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Still Life With Yellow, 2009. The still life genre has to be expanded and redefined beyond the rigid, traditional rules. – TR

90 Tom Reaume A Surge Of Yellow, 2009. – TR Gestures define who and what we are. The ultimate gesture is presented in Suprematism by Kazimir Malevich in 1917. https://arthistoryproject. com/artists/kazimir-malevich/ suprematism/ Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

A Walk Along The Trail, 2009. – TR Transformations define nature and my art.

92 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Drawing

Two-stamened Sedge, Perigynia in 3 aspects plus its subtending bract (right), ink. – TR

ne person asked if I did my botanical drawings (1) O from still photographs? People don’t realize a still photograph of a wildflower has limited usable data, when working at the above level of detail. Fresh plants are needed. Numerous measurements are made, and a low-power binocular microscope allows for suitable visual accuracy. Still photographs look detailed, but are not ideal models. If detail is needed, examine a living plant with your eyes, not through some dead lens screwed into a mechanical, computerized black box. The art on this page is drawn by holding and moving a pen and a camera. The former (above) has well defined restrictions. Its shape must be duplicated in the botanical tradition to help with a plant’s identity. The pure abstract photograph (to the right) is nontraditional and has much more gestural passion and freedom. It too is a demonstration of my ability to draw. ♣

Light Dance # 3, 1982. – TR A pure abstract photograph created by drawing vigorously in a controlled manner with a hand-held camera ⁓ facing a stationary light at night. It is a 1) Tom Reaume, 620 Wild Plants of North America, University negative image of Brice Marden’s of Regina Press, 2009. The 10,000 drawings for this botanical book, created by the author from living plants in the field, are in Han Shan Exit from 1992. the collection of the Canadian Museum of Nature, Ottawa

93 Tom Reaume Green Corners, 2007. Sometimes our eyes need to abandon the center of a photograph and wander along its edges. – TR Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

A Green Seep, 2007. – TR

95 Tom Reaume Poetic Green # 2, 2011. – TR A Selective Green, 2008. – TR Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

A Green Idea, 2009. – TR

98 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Green Along The Edge Of A Road, 2010. – TR

99 Tom Reaume Uphill # 1–4, 2007. – TR View the painting, Pintura, 1957, by the Neo-Concretos Willys de Castro. Perplexing Light, 2005. – TR In a way, this repeating white pattern resembles the horizontal white clouds in the 6-panel landscape, Folding Screen with Design of Musashino Plain, by an unknown artist. A New Element, 2007. – TR Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

The Second Volume, 2014. A pure abstract photograph which is mostly “out-of-focus” by still standards. It is, however, perfectly usable as fine art in a mixed media show on abstraction. – TR

103 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Corruption In Rome, 2010. – TR Similar to Wealth of Nations in 1972 by David Diao. https://www.artsy.net/ artwork/david-diao-wealth-of-nations

104 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

A Gestural Mirage, 2006. – TR

105 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀ S eeinG

eeing is concentrated looking. enlightenment is necessary to survive. In the Seeing is knowing. Our loss of wonderful movie Horse Whisperer (1998), S vision may be the result of mass Kristin Scott Thomas leaves an eastern city migration into “organized” cities. and drives to a western cattle ranch. She There we try to determine the is confused as to which way to turn at an name of a street, the distance to the next stop intersection in the country. When she finally light and why we should visit art galleries when arrives at the ranch of Robert Redford, she we can find great art so easily using Google complains about the lack of signs. Redford Arts & Culture. We are imperfect witnesses to rightly replies – there are plenty of signs, our own failings. Art suffers because of moving they’re just not printed. too quickly. Our culture does not embrace slowness. Yet, the slower you go the more you Seeing is about wanting and taking the time see. to train yourself to be aware, curious and inquisitive about forms and Academics raised in a city are patterns. Seeing has to be a woefully out of touch with the belief in how you see is the right natural world and its myriad of way to see, but not the only way. smells, sounds, textures, colors Seeing and awareness probably and movements, subtle to loud. differs the most between We are still the same biological humans. How you train yourself organism we were 3,000 years to see is important for your ago. We have not mutated to personal development and as an keep up with our machines, nor Wild Daisies and Leaves artist. Pure abstract photography should we. Urbanites foolishly of Grass, 2018 allows you to assess patterns, grouse about rainy days, All abstract images are colors and groups of lights forgetting moisture fuels plants based on forms, colors and before you start drawing with a to bloom and set fruit to feed us. patterns in nature. camera. Experience will allow This is a photograph of you to get the most from these a fragment of evolution. iving in a glass, steel, patterns. ♣ Everything is changing. and concrete, sharply- – TR angled city where everything has a name, Lone is forced to become numb to survive. Living on the edge of a great marsh, visual

106 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

A Mysterious Landscape, 2006. – TR Similar in spirit to the painting, PH-1074, in 1956 by Clyfford Still. https://collection.clyffordstill- museum.org/object/ph-1074

107 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Dark Motion # 3, 2004. A pure abstract photograph in 4 aspects (the new street photography?). Which way is up? – TR There is a spiritual resemblance to, Superficie 290, in 1958 by Giuseppe Capogrossi. See also the sculpture Ponte, in 1958 by Franz Weissmann.

108 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

A Layered Life, 1988. – TR

109 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Innovation # 1, 2006. – TR

110 Tom Reaume Looking At Paris, 2008. – TR A bit scruffy for a photograph, and as far away from a manicured still as possible. One viewer asked when I was in Paris. It is similar in spirit to PH-489, by Clyfford Still in 1944. https://collection. clyffordstillmuseum.org/object/ph-489 Red and Tan, 2003. A simple, clean design with red advancing toward the viewer. I admire forward looking colors. – TR In this vein, take delight in the painting, Le forze della curva, in 1930 by the Futurist Tullio Crali. https://www.art-bronze-sculptures. com/694/oil-painting-le-forze-della- curva-1930-tullio-crali Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

{ Similar }

couple of years before 2018, I pure abstractions in its Shape of Light. Tate’s mailed a letter to several major art curators missed a great opportunity to use my museums asking if they would be abstract images with paintings possessing a A interested in generating a show similar spirit. In this book I provide the names of my pure abstract photographs of artists and titles of paintings that I think paired with “similar” abstract paintings. One would work together with some of my images, person responded by saying it would take and when available a web link or book title. several years to organize such as show. Then You can locate them and decide for yourself. in 2018, I discovered the Tate Modern had Curators (even at the Tate) must know of done just that. However, the crafty curators other paintings that would work well with my at the Tate Modern decided not to include my abstractions on a white wall. ♣

Beauty Emerging From A Corner, 1982. An early successful pure abstract photograph that inspired me to keep going and practice more gestures with a camera at night. – TR One online comment revealed it was a still photograph of a safety pin. He didn’t get it. A similar painting by Robert Motherwell, is Untitled, 1963. https://www.pinterest.ca/ pin/802274121093933302/

113 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Silent Yellow, 2009. – TR This dazzling anti-still photograph is similar to Georgia O’Keeffe’s, Red And Orange Streak, 1919. https://www.pinterest.ca/ pin/798474208905456096/

114 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

A Corner of Photography Left Behind, 2008. –TR Richly detailed still photographs represent the presently accepted curatorial fashion, organized around the economics of the snapshot. Visit https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=w0ztlIAYTCU for an expanded understanding of reality.

115 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Renegade Barcode, 1987. – TR

116 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

An Affair Of The Heart, 1989. Although replete with details, this diptych represents nothing recognizable from our daily travels. The gestures were repeated quickly to build up layers of fine streaks from a string of stationary tiny lights. – TR It has more texture than Two Blacks and White by Ellsworth Kelly in 1991 https://artsandculture. google.com/asset/two-blacks-and- white/vwEStKIHqwBQOw

117 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Pixels Pixels Pixels

ocial analysts decry the rise of pixels in our lives. Cameras, S phones, and computers hold our You can throw all the pixels you want at this attention most days, at work, image of the bumblebee; enlarge it to 2 x 3 play, and often in between. Yet it meters and hang it in the American Museum of all depends on electricity. Pull the plugs and Natural History in New York, and it won’t mean we stumble in darkness. Today, even nature shit. Pixels fool us every day into believing is photographically pixilated (below), which what we see is real or evidence. They are not leaves me with an empty feeling about our even a partial substitute for authenticity. They relationship with the planet’s remaining life. lack almost everything that has any meaning in my life. I took eight snapshots of this particular Does a still camera improve our vision? For bumblebee; kept one. I miss its buzzing the me it doesn’t. It is too fragmenting and devoid most, and its almost continuous movements of feeling and other important properties. It as it fed from the small flowers of goldenrod. I produces a still, 2-D artificial miss it being alive. shadow. A walk in a meadow or woods reveals the many biological Watching the bumblebee visit mutations over millions of years yellow flowers in sunlight was that have lead to our present the highlight of my walk. As ecology. While walking about, wildflowers disappear from pixels do not enter the big scene. landscapes, insects become fewer They are replaced with scents, in numbers and mass due to our breezes, sounds, and ever present overpowering need to subjugate movements, all characteristics nature. Machines and pixels can’t which pixels don’t inherently Half-black Bumblebee sustain us. ♣ possess or convey. visiting Grass-leaved Goldenrod, 2018. Pixilated at the edge of a marsh in July. – TR

118 Tom Reaume Yellow Cleavage, 2001. – TR Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Deep Into The Heart of Yellow, 2006. –TR

120 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Tangled Light, 1986. – TR

121 Tom Reaume Go In That Direction, 1991. This perplexing small photograph, like Wassily Kandinsky’s 1922, Small Worlds IV, has no obvious pattern, which causes the eyes to move around the rectangle looking at odd shapes and curved lines while trying to center on something. – TR https://www.moma. org/collection/works/67212 Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

A Purple Haze, 1991. – TR

123 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Angled Yellow, 2009. – TR

124 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Brownian Motion, 2002. Hidden movements. – TR

125 Tom Reaume A Clear Reality, 1989. – TR Beyond The Orchard, 1982. – TR There are 3 symbols in the above image: a window frame (partial), a human stick figure, and a blurred white dove at the top left similar to the dove in Batismo de Jesus by José Ferraz de Almeida Júnior in 1895. https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/ File:Almeida_J%C3%BAnior_-_Batismo_de_Jesus,_1895.JPG My title and image cast shade on John Szarkowski’s still photographs of knotted apple trees in abandoned orchards, taken after he retired from the MoMA in New York. Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

First Vision After Death, 1989. – TR

128 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Apian Way, 1986. – TR

129 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

This painting is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before 1 January 1923. (Wikipedia).

The original is at the MoMA, NYC.

Giacomo Balla, Street Light, 1910. A Futurist who was the first to paint a concentration of light from a street lamp. Balla rejected traditional subject matter, and painted a very modern object – one of the new, electric street lamps being installed at this time in Rome, where he lived. See Dr. Jennifer Bethke’s article https://www.khanacademy. org/humanities/art-1010/WWII- dada/art-great-war/a/balla-street- light

y favorite painting, Street Street M Light, is saturated with colored photons darting from an artificial light which symbolizes the increase in tempo and machinery in our lives that took place all through the 1900s. In this well-lit darkness, I work to create my lens-based pure abstractions in s the warm night air. His light is mine, t to transform into a different kind of g h photographic art. L i

130 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

40 Shades of Gray, 1987. – TR

131 Tom Reaume A Light Kiss, 1988. – TR Broadway and West 39th Street, 2002 – TR Mine is a light-filled Broadway Boogie Woogie 1943, Piet Mondrian 1872–1944, by Douglas Coupland in 2011. Acrylic and latex on canvas. https:// artsandculture.google.com/ asset/broadway-boogie- woogie-1943-piet-mondrian- 1872-1944-douglas-coupland/ jgEBNwxFcGnsJA?hl=en Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Evolution, 1986. – TR

134 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Why Not? 1988. – TR

135 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

My Three Previous Lives, 1982. – TR

136 Tom Reaume A Splatter Of Light, 2010. – TR Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Green Landscape, 2006. – TR

138 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

A Red Landscape, 2011. – TR

139 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Birth of Science, Death of Science, 1983. – TR

140 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Light Dance # 2, 1982. – TR It is analogous to the painting, Cretto G 1, by Alberto Burri in 1975. https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/cret- to-g-1-alberto-burri/BgH2ncS1Nta3Mg?hl=en

141 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

A Light Migration, 1986. – TR

142 Tom Reaume This Is Art, 1995. – TR The Fullness Of Summer, 1997. – TR Civilization, 1984. – TR The World According To Henry, 1984. – TR Similar to Composition by Morton L Schamberg in 1916. https://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/Com- position/A656BAEED06C1B66 Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

A Growing Menace, 1983. – TR A photograph similar in spirit to a pencil drawing, Study of a Man’s Forearm, c. 1908 (right) by the Futurist Umberto Boccioni, (in the public domain). https://www. metmuseum.org/art/collection/ search/485559

147 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀ A New Perspective, 1985. – TR Similar in spirit to the painting, Vortice, in 1914 by the Futurist, Giacomo Balla

148 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Cleavage, 1985. – TR

149 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

A Significant Form, 1988. – TR A central figure as in Gravure Original by Georges Braque in 1908. https://artsandculture.google. com/asset/gravure-original/kgGI4u60usXm1A

150 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Edge of Woman, 1982. – TR One woman asked which part of her body was pictured?

151 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Between Rainbows, 1987. – TR

152 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Right After Q, 1983. – TR

153 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

A Surplus Of E, 1984. – TR The Bewitched Mill by Franz Marc in 1913 has a similar texture in its waterfall. https:// www.artic.edu/artworks/9021/the-be- witched-mill

154 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

The Sublime X, 1983. – TR Similar to the Black Cross, New Mexico by Georgia O’Keeffe in 1929. https:// www.artic.edu/artworks/46327/black- cross-new-mexico

155 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Yellow Landscapes 1–8, 2002. – TR See the painting, Vermelho cortando o branco, in 1958 by the Neo-Concretos, Hélio Oiticica.

156 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Reclining, 2011. – TR

157 Tom Reaume Along The Edge, 2004. – TR Angular like Roy Round’s photo- graph of Julie Kent in Giselle A Serious Mark, 2007. – TR A Splendid Landscape, 2002. – TR Light Dance # 1, 1996. – TR The Realm of the Possible, 2014. – TR Once Upon A Time, 1985. – TR Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Index Images, People and Text

moving 6, 7 Humans 70 Symbols Hunt Institute 5 2-D images 85 tosser 63 Canadian Museum of Nature 5 A Christ 70 I Christians 53 Ability to Draw 93 Collections 5 █ IMAGES “abstract” 13, 14, 15, 16, 23, 43, Create 7, 8, 9, 16, 24, 27, 43, 85, 28 septembre 1984 84 57, 58 130 40 Shades of Gray 131 Abstract 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, Creativity 43, 63 A Clear Reality 126 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 23, 38, 43, Curatorial Fashion 115 A Corner of Photography Left 46, 57, 58, 72, 74, 75, 84, 86, Curators 8, 13, 14, 15, 23, 36, Behind 115 93, 103, 106, 108, 113 39, 43, 46, 53, 57, 58, 85, 113 A Drift of Yellow 71 confusion 43 African Evening 21 names 15 D After Ansel Adams 58 paintings 6 A Gestural Mirage 105 photographs 6 Dance of life 55 A Green Idea 98 pure 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 15, Dancers 9 A Green Seep 95 16, 17, 18, 23, 24, 27, 38, 43, Direct Light 15 A Growing Menace 147 46, 63, 72, 74, 75, 84, 86, 93, Drawing 6, 8, 9, 22, 52, 85, 93, A Layered Life 109 103, 108, 113, 130 106, 147 A Left-handed Structure 22 Abstractions 6, 8, 9, 13, 15, 23, Drones 13, 14 A Light Kiss 132 24, 27, 57, 63, 113, 130 A Light Migration 142 Abstract Photography 6 E All We Can See 20 lens-based pure 6 Almost Dawn 59 outside-the-box 6 Electronic Devices 13 Along The Boulevard 30 still 6 Evolution 6, 8, 53, 70, 106 Along The Edge 158 Academic Article 85 Experimental 6 Alpha-Pi 72 Academics 106 Extinction 70 Ambition, Side View 78 American Crow 57 A Mysterious Landscape 107 Anticipation 8 F An Affair Of The Heart 117 Anti-stills 9, 17 An Appropriate Green 9, 10 Art Gallery of Ontario 13 Fine Art 6, 13, 46, 58, 103 A New Element 102 Artificial Lights 17 Freedom of Movement 8 A New Perspective 148 Artistic Limit 7 Free ebook 7 Angled Yellow 124 G An Offering 72 B Another Storm 86 Apian Way 129 Biological Mutations 118 Gesture 83, 91 A Purple Haze 123 Botanical Drawings 5, 63, 93 Gestures 24, 84, 91 A Red Apple 23 Botanical Tradition 93 Google Arts & Culture 106 Group f64 23 A Red Landscape 139 C A Secret 83 H A Selective Green 97 A Serious Mark 159 Camera 6, 7, 8, 9, 13, 15, 17, 23, A Short Cut 80 24, 27, 43, 53, 57, 63, 82, 85, Hand-drawn Process 9 A Significant Form 150 93, 106, 113, 118 Hand-held Camera 6 A Splatter Of Light 137 hand-held 6 Historical Comedy 8 History 13 A Splendid Landscape 160

164 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

A Surge Of Yellow 91 Glissement 10 Nude Descending a Staircase, No. A Surplus Of E 154 God Laughing 39, 58 2 52 A Time of Pink 16 God Thinking 41 Obsessive Motion 11 At The Green Edge 73 Go In That Direction 122 Ocean Park No. 67 43 A Walk Along The Trail 92 Gravure Original 150 Once Upon A Time 163 Batismo de Jesus 127 Gray Landscape 64 One Gesture 82 Beauty Emerging From A Corner Green Along The Edge Of A Road Opening White 55 113 99 Perplexing Light 101 Before and After The Storm 86 Green Corners 94 PH-235 69 Between Rainbows 152 Green Landscape 138 PH-489 111 Beyond The Orchard 127 Guernica 53 PH-1074 107 Birth of Science, Death of Science Half-black Bumblebee 118 Píhuamo Valley 81 140 Han Shan Exit 93 Pintura 100 Black Cross, New Mexico 155 Happy Birthday 89 Poetic Green # 2 96 Black Through White 28 Homage to Bernd & Hilla Becher Ponte 108 Broadway and West 39th Street 47 Portrait Of God Spinning 40, 53 133 Homage to Duchamp 52 Portrait Of The Artist 2 Broadway Boogie Woogie 1943, Piet Homage to Jeff Wall 44 Reclining 157 Mondrian 1872–1944 133 Homage to Motherwell 49, 50 Red And Orange Streak 114 Brownian Motion 125 Homage to Rothko 46 Red and Tan 112 Canada Geese 24 Homage To The Futurists 48 Renegade Barcode 116 Civilization 145 Homage To The Snapshot 51 Right After Q 153 Cleavage 149 Homage to Turner 45 Right Before Dawn 68 Cloudburst 81 HP13-1113 42 Saint-Séverin No. 3 87 Come Closer 77 Image X 12 Scontro di situazioni n.4 58 Composition 146 Imagine This 54 Seated 37 Composition grise et rouge 43 Innovation # 1 110 Shows As He Goes 38 Consequential 32 Interrupted Landscape 65 Silent Yellow 114 Corruption In Rome 104 Julie Kent in Giselle 158 Small Worlds IV 122 Cretto G 1 141 Just For You 3 So Little Red 18 Dark is Outside 25, 26, 27 Le forze della curva 112 So Little Time, So Much Time 88 Dark Motion # 3 108 Light Dance # 1 161 Space Baby 14 Deep Into The Heart of Yellow 120 Light Dance # 2 141 Still Life With Yellow 90 Detio största, nr 3. Ynglingaåldern. Light Dance # 3 93 Street Light 130 Ur Grupp 4 43 Looking At Paris 111 Study of a Man’s Forearm 147 Dorsal Aspect 24 Madonna with Child 53 Superficie 290 108 Edge of Woman 151 March Of The Curators 36 Suprematism 91 Elegy to the Spanish Republic, 110 Milk 4, 53 Tangled Light 121 49 Moonrise 29 The Beggar 69 Emily in the Greenhouse 13 Morning Mist 66 The Bewitched Mill 154 End of A Creative Day 79 Mostly White 20 The Fullness Of Summer 144 Evolution 134 Murillo, Gerardo 81 The Milkmaid 53 Extinction 70 My Brief Regret x 3 35 The Pleasure of 40º 84 First Vision After Death 128 My Three Previous Lives 136 The Portrait of Alessandro Manzoni Folding Screen with Design of Nadar Elevating Photography to Art 64 Musashino Plain 101 13 The Realm of the Possible 162 For Many Reasons 5 Near The Entrance 34 The Second Volume 103 Friday Morning 61 Neon Nails 17 The Sublime X 155 Garage Door 57 New Leaves 8 The Unfolding 31 Genesis 67 Night Wing 59 The World According To Henry 146 Gesture # 44 76 Nocturnal Orbits 19 This Is Art 143

165 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Three x Two 56 Brooklyn 13 DaSilva, Vicki 23 Thursday Morning 60 of Modern Art 46, 57 Daumier, Honoré 13 Tree 75 Tate Modern 57, 113 de Almeida Júnior, José Ferraz 127 Two Blacks and White 117 Museums 4, 6, 38, 57, 113 de Castro, Willys 100 Two-stamened Sedge 93 Delaunay, Robert 14, 87 Under The Arches 87 N Demeny, Georges 23 Untitled 78, 113 Diao, David 10, 104 Uphill # 1–4 100 Nature 4, 5, 7, 8, 16, 58, 63, 70, Diebenkorn, Richard 43 Upper Left 7 85, 92, 93, 106, 118 Dorfman, John 74 Vermelho cortando o branco 156 Night Habitat 9 Duchamp, Marcel 52 Vortice 148 Nude 52 Fisher, Andrew 15 Warm Rain I 43 Fisher, Morgan 23 Wealth of Nations 104 O Franke, Herbert 16 We Can Choose # 1–3 3 Galassi, Peter 85 Wednesday Morning 62 Opinions and Fashions 23 Glover, MIchael 58 Weeds 57 Other-worldly 85 God 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 53, 58 White Over Red 17 Gravenhorst, Hein 16 Why Not? 135 P Grundberg, Andy 57 Wild Daisies 106 Harvey, Cig 13 Without Yellow There Is No God 42 Painting 8, 13, 14, 23, 46, 52, 58, Haven, Kathleen 57 Wonder Woman 38 64, 69, 72, 74, 78, 85, 86, 87, Hayez, Francesco 64 Yellow Cleavage 119 100, 107, 112, 113, 130, 141, Jäger, Gottfried 16 Yellow Landscapes 1–8 156 148, 156 Judah, Hettie 58 Your Undivided Attention 33 Paintings 84 Kandinsky, Wassily 14, 74, 122 … Karsh, Yousuf 38 Inspiration 5, 43 █ PEOPLE Kelly, Ellsworth 117 In-the-box thinking 6 Koyama, Taisuke 15 Adams, Ansel 23, 58 Krasner, Lee 86 L af Klint, Hilma 14, 43 Kupka, František 14 Apicella, Olivier 14 Leibovitz, Annie 38 Lack of Awareness 53 Arbus, Diane 38 Lewis, Wyndham 57 Library of Congress 38 Bailey, Oscar 57 Louis, Morris 72 Lights 6, 8, 9, 17, 23, 27, 106, Balla, Giacomo 130, 148 Ludwig, Jens 63 117 Beaton, Cecil 16 Magritte, René 38 artificial 9, 10, 17, 118, 130 Bethke, Jennifer 130 Maine, Stephen 42 Los Angeles 17 Biles, Simone 63 Malevich, Kazimir 91 Lyrical Abstraction 43 Black, Robert 74 Marc, Franz 154 Boccioni, Umberto 147 Marden, Brice 93 M Bogdanova, Sofia 63 Marey, Étienne-Jules 23 Braque, Georges 150 Mavlian, Shoair 57 Machines 118 Burri, Alberto 141 Mayer, Grace 57 Memory 9, 15, 18 Burtynsky, Edward 13 Mead, Ray 20 Method 9 Callahan, Harry 57 Mondrian, Piet 57 Methodology 13, 53, 63 Capogrossi, Giuseppe 108 Morgan, Barbara 23 MoMA 4, 57, 85, 127, 130 Carus, Titus Lucretius 70 Motherwell, Robert 49, 113 Movement 4, 34, 63 Claude, Georges 17 Murillo, Gerardo 81 Movements 6, 9, 23, 31, 53, 63, Coburn, Alvin L 23 Nowell, Iris 20 106, 118, 125 Costello, Diarmuid 15 Oiticica, Hélio 156 Museum 13, 27, 57, 58 Coupland, Douglas 133 O’Keeffe, Georgia 114, 155 American Museum of Natural Crali, Tullio 112 Parmentier, Michel 84 History 118 Curtis, Edward 38 Picasso, Pablo 23, 53

166 Tom Reaume Pure Abstract Photography ⁀

Poliakoff, Serge 43 artistic limit 7 transformation 18 Pollock, Jackson 57 at night 6 vortographs 23 Reaume, Tom 74 avant-garde 57 what is abstract? 15 Redford, Robert 106 captions 38, 57 x-rays 9 Rexer, Lyle 14 community 6, 8, 13, 23, 70 Pictorialism 23 Rothko, Mark 46 complicated 16 Pixels 53, 118 Round, Roy 158 confusion 43 characteristics 118 Rubin, Marty 23 creativity 43 Pretense of Abstraction 23 Ruby, Karine 63 democratic 23 Psychology 15 Rulkens, Paul 6 documentary 13, 63 Pure Abstractions 9 Schamberg, Morton L 146 documentation 7 Schwabacher, Ethel 43 documents 13, 85 R Scott, Kristin 106 drones 14 Senise, Daniel 78 editing 63 Rich Detail 13 Sherman, Cindy 38 electronic devices 13 Siskind, Aaron 15 experimental 6, 7, 8, 57 S Stern, Rudi 17 fine art 6, 13, 46, 58, 103 Seeing 4, 106 Stieglitz, Alfred 13, 23 fragmenting 118 Shape of Light 57, 58, 113 Still, Clyfford 69, 107, 111 gesture 83 Snapshot Aesthetic 23 Stojković, Jelna 15 gestures 9, 27, 42, 47, 63, 113, Social Outsiders 53 Strand, Paul 13, 57 117 Software 3 Szarkowski, John 127 Group f64 23 Thomas, Kristin Scott 106 habit 6 Truitt, Anne 59 history 4, 5, 13, 15, 17, 23, 57, T Turner, JMW 45 58, 63, 85, 118 Tate Modern 57, 113 unknown artist 53, 101 human psychology 15 Ted Talks 6 Vedova, Emilio 58 journals 53 Toronto 13, 27 Vermeer, Johannes 53 layered 12 Transformation 18 Wall, Jeff 4, 8, 9, 17, 43, 44, 53 lens-based 6, 7, 13, 16, 20, 23, Weissmann, Franz 108 43, 63, 130 U Welling, James 15 Lyrical Abstraction 43 Wiesing, Lambert 16 memory 9, 15, 18 Unknown Artist 53, 101 Wonder Woman 38 opinions and fashions 23 Yesil, Nihal 15 photograms 9, 57 V Yeung, Sunny 23 Pictorialism 23 … portraits 38 Verbal Enhancement 85 Photograms 9, 57 pretense 15 Viewfinder 6, 9 pure abstract 5, 7 Virginia Prize 13 █ PHOTOGRAPHY re-understood 63 Vortographs 23 richly-detailed 6, 7, 13, 43, 44, 35 mm negative 7, 40 53, 70, 85 W “abstract” 13, 14, 15, 16, 23, scale 16 43, 57, 58 scruffy 111 Well-lit Darkness 130 aerial 13 seeing 106 What is abstract? 15 aerials 13, 14 snapshot 9, 23, 53, 115 aerial views 13 snapshot aesthetic 23 X anti-still 3, 27, 43, 63, 114 still 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 13, 14, 15, art 3, 6, 9, 13, 14, 15, 17, 23, 16, 23, 27, 38, 43, 53, 57, 58, X-rays 9 43, 46, 52, 57, 58, 63, 72, 74, 63, 74, 75, 85, 90, 93, 103, 106, 85, 92, 93, 103, 106, 112, 113, 111, 113, 114, 115, 118, 127 Y 130, 147 stylistic diversity 8 Youtube video 3

167 Tom Reaume