Abstracts

Collective
Abstracts

Photographs: Antony Cairns, Tiane Doan na Champassak, Olivier Pin-Fat, Ester Vonplon, Daisuke Yokota

Publisher: Adad Books

100 pages pages

Year: 2015

Comments: Softcover with dust jacket, 210 x 270 mm. Edition of 750, 5 different covers.

This book presents various examples of abstractions created through photography and photographic processes. Exploring the possibilities of the photographic medium, each artist produces abstract results in different ways: some are camera-less experiments with chemicals and photographic paper, while some rely on close-ups, details and fragments of images whether the body, the natural world or urban landscapes.

Antony Cairns produces abstractions of London’s landscape at night through experimental uses of both the camera and darkroom techniques. Using part-developed 35mm transparencies that are then solarised and re-developed, Cairns produces fragments of the city on aluminium surfaces that echo their subjects.

Tiane Doan na Champassak’s Corpus series consists of close-ups of nudes printed with the Fresson carbon process, adapting and using unique sheets of paper dating from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to the photographic image that result in combinations of rich tones and textures.

Olivier Pin-Fat’s work concerns the destructive potential of the darkroom and the unpredictable effects of out of date and defunct materials. Deliberately using a process which is hard to control, Pin-Fat accepts the disappearances and losses inherent to darkroom practice to embrace the accidental abstractions that can occur by chance.

Ester Vonplon’s images of nature are imbued with textures, distortions and imperfections, whether overexposed or underexposed, scratched or blurred, the natural abstractions echo the subjects of the images: decaying forests, melting snow and eroding mountains.

Daisuke Yokota's abstractions are produced without a camera, by experimenting directly with blank photographic film, which is subjected to manipulation by heat and chemicals. Working with several layers of film, Yokota builds up complex multi-coloured images, both transparent and opaque which resemble nothing less than pure painterly abstractions.