Well, I think your teacher was just wrong. The museum you linked to had an exhibit called extreme abstraction. Which logically implies there is “less extreme”, as in “partial” abstraction from reality. It’s a continuum. The more representational, the less abstract and vice versa. Checking, the Wikipedia article on abstract art says much the same thing:
Abstraction indicates a departure from reality in depiction of imagery in art. This departure from accurate representation can be slight, partial, or complete. Abstraction exists along a continuum. Even art that aims for verisimilitude of the highest degree can be said to be abstract, at least theoretically, since perfect representation is likely to be exceedingly elusive. Artwork which takes liberties, altering for instance color and form in ways that are conspicuous, can be said to be partially abstract. Total abstraction bears no trace of any reference to anything recognizable. In geometric abstraction, for instance, one is unlikely to find references to naturalistic entities. Figurative art and total abstraction are almost mutually exclusive. But figurative and representational (or realistic) art often contains partial abstraction.
Deliberate partial or complete abstraction seems to include just about all modern art, after artists got over the shock that cameras were pretty much faster and in many ways better at recording realistic images than artists were at painting them, including artists making use of optics:
So returning to your legs photograph, it’s slightly abstract and also pictorialist in that it uses a standard pictorialist technique to soften and alter the version of reality that would otherwise be captured by the camera:
I’m still curious as to the whys and wherefores of the making of the image, what artistic quest and inspiration, what the lady thought about the proceedings and the images, whether she’s in a yoga pose, and etc . And what’s next, of course, assuming an on-going exploration of themes/topics that have meaning to you as the artist-photographer.