The photographic process is often credited in part with displacing representation from painting, pushing it over the course of the first half of the last century further into the domain of abstraction. The camera was commonly thought to capture and document a supposed objective reality in a way the human hand never could. However, photography itself has also been variously employed for nonrepresentational abstraction since its inception.

From the very first photograms to Aaron Siskind‘s ab-ex alluding macrophotography, to Penelope Umbrico‘s digitally-manipulated found images of “Suns From Flickr,” The Edge of Vision: Abstractions in Contemporary Photography (on view at Schneider Museum of Art in Oregon through June 16, 2012) examines the history of nonrepresentational photographic image-making and its role in contemporary art.

In a two part video interview, independent writer and critic Lyle Rexer, who curated the exhibition and authored the 2009 Aperture-published book by the same title, says he was drawn to artists that “were making pictures that moved away from from an easily identifiable subject, or that complicated the picture or the response that we normal have to pictures, in what is essentially thought of as a denotative medium.”

The traveling exhibition, which has been on view in a number of places around the world, each time in a slightly different iteration, features work by a diverse group of contemporary artists including Bill Armstrong, Carel Balth, Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, Ellen Carey, Roland Fischer, Michael Flomen, Manuel Geerinck, Edward Mapplethorpe, Penelope Umbrico, Silvio Wolf, and more listed here. For Rexer, he says, bringing this group together and seeing what they have in common is meant to address the following question:

What is it about photography now that makes it possible for us to have artists that  on the one hand do very documentary work, and other artists at the same time, sometimes the same artists, who are also doing work that would qualify as abstract?

For more information on the work on view, be sure to check out the Edge of Vision Video Interview Series, conducted during the installation at Aperture Gallery in 2009, on vimeo:

• Penelope Umbrico persents her work “For Sale/TV’s From Craigslist,” and explains why she considers herself a documentary photographer, “a traveler through media.”
• Ellen Carey discusses her large-scale work “Pulls with Lifts and Drops,” film pulled through the rollers of a Polaroid large-format camera, and her color photogram, “PushPins,” exploring how each challenges the viewer to rethink the medium.
• Barbara Kasten explains her work based on physical constructions that play with light and are created only for the purpose of being photographed. By this approach, the photograph itself becomes the object and is removed from being representative or documentary.
• Silvio Wolf presents his work which combines straight photography and the unexposed ends of film rolls as negatives exposed to light. The end results are mesmerizing and meditative colorful images about light and absence of light.
• Bill Armstrong puts in context his “Mandala #450″ piece, explains why he uses blurring as a process and explores his “painterly approach to photography.”
• Charles Lindsay speaks about how he started working with his unique carbon emulsion process, his inspirations and the combination of his photographic, video and sound works.
• Seth Lambert contextualizes his work in the show “Nothing on the Bed of an Epson Expression 10000XL” within his Failures series of grids mapping out anything from beard hair, mirror pieces to nothing with a blank scan.
• Carel Balth explains the process behind his works “Moving IV” and “Madrid V,” and how his appropriation of images through a digital format functions as a new medium.
• Jack Sal speaks about his piece “Sale/Sala (Salt/Room)” while you watch him installing it.
• Manuel Geerinck, who started his career as a painter, speaks about his unique process combining his drawings that he then photographs in motion.

Also, watch a panel discussion on Abstraction in Photography from 2009 at the Hammer Museum at UCLA, moderated by Rexer, and read a review of the exhibition when it was on view at Lewis & Clark College in Portland earlier this year, from the Oregonian.

Exhibition on view:
Thursday, May 10 – Saturday, June 16, 2012

$5 Suggested Donation

Schneider Museum of Art
1250 Siskiyou Blvd
Ashland, Oregon
(541) 552-6245

On view as part of the Pingyao International Photography Festival earlier this year. The Edge of Vision, curated by Lyle Rexer, presented a group of contemporary photographers who base their practice in some form of abstraction. Click and scroll the images for a virtual experience of the installation in China.

Special thanks to photographer Nils Duval and Matthieu Torrano from China Time Machine Image Centre, who created this VR. CTMIC was instrumental in printing this and several other exhibitions at the festival.

The exhibition, specially expanded for Pingyao, was divided into several sections: “The Aesthetics of Perception,” “The Politics of the Image,” and “The Poetics of Light, Space and Time.” Taken together they force us to ask, what, after all, is a photograph, and where does its meaning lie? In the picture itself? In the world or its phenomena? In us? These questions are as vital and open today as they were 170 years ago, when no one knew exactly what a photograph should look like or what it might disclose.

Artists included in this presentation are Bill Armstrong, Carel Balth, Ellen Carey, Richard Caldicott, Roland Fischer, Manuel Geerinck, Shirine Gill, Barbara Kasten, Seth Lambert, Charles Lindsay, Roger Newton, Nicki Stager, and Penelope Umbrico.

View new videos from the weekly series of artist’s interviews with Barbara Kasten and Carel Balth included in the exhibition now on view at Aperture Gallery, The Edge of Vision: Abstraction in Contemporary Photography.

In the first video-clip, Barbara Kasten presents her work Studio Construct 17 as based on physical constructions that play with light and are created only for the purpose of being photographed. By this approach, the photograph itself becomes the object and is removed from being representative or documentary. Kasten expands that while subject matter is inherent to photography, her images are unidentifiable and exist as records of light that explore spatial and formal ambiguity. This distance results in a more indirect connection between the viewer and the work.

In the second video-clip, artist Carel Balth explains the process behind his works Moving IV and Madrid V, and how his appropriation of images through a digital format functions as a new medium. Originally recorded as digital video taken by Balth, he carefully selected screen-grabs that are later printed on canvas called Piezographs. He explains that this approach creates a new vantage that confronts reality though light, space, time, and movement into a culmination of images. Balth likes the idea that people may not completely understand his work at first, and recommends The Edge of Vision by curator Lyle Rexer for further insight to his aesthetic.

Click here to view The Edge of Vision limited-edition portfolio.

Click here to view related microsite including previously posted videos with Lyle Rexer part 1 & part 2, Bill Armstrong, Seth Lambert, Charles Lindsay, Jack Sal, Penelope Umbrico, Silvio Wolf.

View new videos from the weekly series of artist’s interviews with Ellen Carey and Manuel Geerinck included in the exhibition now on view at Aperture Gallery, The Edge of Vision: Abstraction in Contemporary Photography.

In the first video clip, Ellen Carey presents her works in the exhibition: the large-scale Pulls with Lifts and Drops of film pulled through the rollers of a Polaroid large-format camera and her color photogram, PushPins, where the artist used pushpins to perforate the photographic paper in the darkroom. Carey explains how abstraction in photography challenges the viewer to rethink the medium, and go beyond the narrative side to explore new arrays of light and color compositions as well as new processes using meaningful materials that reference the history of photography. She also highlights the physicality of her work often exhibited through large-scale installations.

Ellen Carey from Aperture Foundation on Vimeo.

In the second video clip, Belgian artist Manuel Geerinck, who started his career as a painter, speaks about his unique process combining his drawings that he then photographs in motion. Inspired by minimalism and the early days of photography, Geerinck explains how his work is at the crossroads of photography and painting as well as abstraction and figurative, always “at the edge.” He also speaks about his exploration of colors through the photographic medium.

Manuel Geerinck from Aperture Foundation on Vimeo.

Stay tuned next Thursday for video clips of Barbara Kasten and Carel Balth.

Click here to view The Edge of Vision limited-edition portfolio including Manuel Geerinck.

Click here to view related microsite including previously posted videos with Lyle Rexer part 1 & part 2, Bill Armstrong, Seth Lambert, Charles Lindsay, Jack Sal, Penelope Umbrico, Silvio Wolf.

The work of some of the most important photographers of the twentieth century is currently on view in The Christopher Hyland Collection of Photography, By Way of These Eyes: The Sublime, Exotic and Familiar at the New Britain Museum of American Art in New Britain, CT  from June 6 through September 6, 2009. Tonight marks the opening reception to celebrate the show. Over the last decade, the museum has organized a distinguished series of exhibitions of contemporary photography and this show focuses on a collection of work of twentieth-century photographers amassed by the keen eye of Christopher Hyland. Hyland, founder of one of the world’s leading textile manufacturing firms and a collector since his youth, has put together a body of work informed by his exceptional eye and world travels. The well-known tastemaker and private art collector, based in Chelsea, is an avid supporter of his neighbor, Aperture Foundation. Included in the Christopher Hyland Collection, which features works by the  renowned  artists Herb Ritz,  Henri Cartier Bresson, Robert Maplethorpe, Vik Muniz , Sally Mann, Edward Weston, and Edward Steichen, are works purchased from the Aperture Limited-Edition Photographs program: highlights include Christine, 2003 by Richard Renaldi ; Eva Le Porge, Jock Sturges; Michael Wolf’s tc39 and tc88;  The Edge of Vision Portfolio featuring the work of Bill Armstrong, Richard Caldicott, Manuel Geerinck, Mikko Sinervo, and Nicki Stager; portfolios by Paul Strand and single works by Brett Weston, among others. Exciting programming is scheduled as an accompaniment to the exhibition, with lectures centered on many of the artists Aperture has published through the years: Diane Arbus, Edward Weston, Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz. and Sally Mann.  Also of note is the August 13 Art Happy Hour, titled the “The F stops here,” feature Ellen Carey and Bill Armstrong, included in the just published The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography. The New Britain Museum of American Art is a great destination for the photography enthusiast this summer!

The Christopher Hyland Collection of Photography, By Way of These Eyes: The Sublime, Exotic and Familiar
Saturday, June 6—Sunday, September 6, 2009
Opening Reception: Friday, June 12, 2009 5:00—7:00 pm
New Britain Museum of American Art
56 Lexington Street
New Britain, CT
(860) 229-0257