Note: This is an update of a post I wrote in 2004 on my first blog at Blogger. I have been going through posts on that site which I’d long ago forsaken, and selecting a few that I’ve thought worthy of editing and sharing here.
As a kid, I would lie on the floor or hang my head off the edge of the couch and look at the ceilings in our house and imagine that the ceiling was a floor. I imagined having to step over the molded rectilinear archways between the rooms. The chandelier in the dining room would stand up straight. Often, I would slightly cross my eyes, and the the textured ceiling would appear to hover just above me, within reach.
While talking on the phone one time, I was lying on the floor looking at the ceiling of the hallway heading to my bedroom and the experience reminded me of those long-ago days. And then I started to take some photographs.
I took that series of photographs and uploaded them to my Flickr site and organized them in a set I’ve called Ceiling Abstracts. With only a couple of exceptions, I’ve only slightly cropped and minimally re-touched the original images. While making some of the photographs, I turned on out-of-frame lights that would alter the colour of the ceiling and/or walls. In a few cases, I’ve rotated, inverted or flipped the images while editing.
The one above was a view in my bathroom when I lived in East Lansing. The green wash in the room is from the plastic shower curtain section I’d cut and hung over the window to keep shower water from gathering on the window sill. The one I referred to in the second paragraph is ”Ceiling Abstract #1".
I suppose that if one were to enjoy the photos, one has to forget about reality. I suppose, too, that that describes — to a degree — the notion of “abstract,” that is, suspending reality. Looking up the Merriam-Webster definition of the word, however, its meaning as a noun is “something that summarizes or concentrates the essentials of a larger thing or several things.” Its meaning as a verb: to “remove or separate.” So, I guess that the second definition describes the process more accurately.
A lot of people, I think, have the idea that abstract art is something completely made up by an artist, and therefore not “real.” While that can be true, of course, it’s not always the case. Take, for example, macro- and microphotography, in which images are abstracted from a larger whole.
What lies within the frame of any photograph, regardless of its subject matter, is an abstraction from the larger view we take in with our eyes, and — to go a step further — the view we can’t take in with our eyes. I can’t recall which well-known photographer said it, but it was possibly Ansel Adams or Henri Cartier-Bresson, but I recall a quote something to the effect of “all photography is abstract.”
That said, I like the view of my Flickr set in composite form.
