foam abstract #2

This picture was made during the recent  stormy weather that took place  in early May.  This  particular  abstraction refers back to this earlier  foam abstract. Both of these  are abstract in the sense of the image being removed from its  context. 

However, there is a context to this abstraction which removes itself from all context.   The picture was made during during the Covid-19 lockdown.   It is not often that there is foam amongst the coastal granite rocks. It is generally happens  during a  big storm,  but the waves from the   surging seas usually prevent access to most of the littoral zone. The foam doesn't hang around for that long either.   

I am attracted to foam on granite  because it creates a starkness ---the colour is close to  just black and white.  There is a richness that I cannot achieve with converting a colour  image made with a digital camera to black and white. The latter  usually comes out an insipid muddy grey.   So my concern  here is  the modernist concern with the materiality of  the photograph. 

Abstract photography  moves away from narrative, and thereby history, toward an image that is located wholly within itself, free of reference to time or location. Yet there is a history to abstraction in the visual arts. The need for a medium to move away from all context is thwarted by the ultimate context of history.  By placing abstract photography  within a tradition, the works are then necessarily viewed in the context of their predecessors.