Flowmaster, Okeechobee, FL 2010
This past week I had an opening for an exhibition that I curated. It was a show about abstraction, and I wanted to give a few of my thoughts about the weekend of events that surrounded the show. First of all, the show was very good, the work of Betty Scott Owen, Scott Sturgeon, and Jon Manchester were all very good and got rave reviews from those who were there. Showing abstraction is somewhat rare for us in the Photography Department at Crealdé, mainly because most of us here are more in the tradition of documentary photography. Curating the show, it was hard for me to find three good abstract photographers, but in the end the effort was worth the wait.
Betty gave a workshop that weekend and it is my feeling that some of the participants were working out of their comfort zone. I was glad to see those students in the workshop because it is always good to photograph without feeling that you totally sure of yourself. I feel that it makes you look harder, look deeper. Even the student, who did not do the most abstract work during the workshop, was heading in that direction, using his eyes more than he had ever done before. He may have been unsure and unhappy with his work, but he did make movement.
This past fall, when I was in Yorktown Virginia visiting my friend Bob Lerner, I showed a few pieces that were a good bit more abstract than my usual photography. However, Bob noticed that my normal social landscapes had a different feel to them in part because my “for fun” attempts at abstraction had influenced my eye and those photographs that were not intended to be abstract. I feel that the photos were the better for it. Abstraction for me is difficult and I have to work at it, but it is there to be mined if I take the time to notice. Maybe in another 20 years I will have enough worthy abstracts to show, but until then, I will use them as an exercise for my eye and mind.
