Back turned on Realism - Abstract Photography opens up new Possibilities to the Media
In painting, abstraction had another tradition long before photography. Early 20th century went on, more and more artists to the outer reality are uninteresting. The photograph was too closely linked to the reality. It could be a long time no one imagined how one can penetrate with the technical eye in emotional and mental worlds.
In the early phase of Abstract Fototgrafie, early 20th century, the artists believed one must completely renounce cameras to produce abstract images can. The first experiments made with his Christian Schad "Schadography" that so reduced the production process of the photos that you sometimes spoke of apparatus-less photography.
Nowadays a distinction is made between conceptual approaches that focus on the "process of imaging" (Kröner 2011) and thus on the "photographic basic research" and more aesthetically oriented approaches.
Well-known representatives of abstract photography are Thomas Ruff, Miriam Böhm or Marco Breuer.
Ruff´s approach is characterized by “openness in the use of various sources of photographic ideas, of raw materials and of processing practices". The starting points of his "substrate images" are for example manga comics that were broken down into their pixelated items at the computer until from the originally banal motives flows of melting colors emerged that reveal the "substrate" of the image. Furthermore, even with his "New jpgs" Ruff focuses on digital image processing and transmission.
