Elle - thanks for your thoughts. It’s flattering to me that one of my pictures triggered that sort of introspection and philosophical musing. IMO, that’s actually the highest compliment I can get about something that I do.
I’ll admit the title of the post was a bit of a sales pitch - “these are abstract legs” does not make logical sense. So to resolve the cofusion, you click on it and see what an abstract leg looks like.
Back when I was 11 years old, in a report for school, I wrote about some artist’s work and described it as “almost abstract depictions of…” The teacher docked points off of the paper because of the term “almost abstract.” It either is, or is not abstract, she said.
So to this day, I am uncomfortable with the word due to this childhood trauma, but what word is better? “Ambiguous?” “Heavily stylized?”
Here’s a painting that hangs in the museum near me. Whenever I visit, I spend about 10 minutes looking at it. Street Music, by Norman Wilfred Lewis (1950)
Is it abstract, or isn’t it? I think I see people, trumpets, trombones, bass cleffs, quarter rests in it, but I’m never quite sure. And would I see those things if the painting hadn’t been titled “Street Music?” Or would I see something different? I really can’t answer that with certainty. And I love that about this painting.
I sort of enjoy reveling in the gray area, and that’s what I was trying to do with that leg picture. Give you just enough to get you to fill in the blanks.
It reminded me also of a Morris Louis painting in the same gallery. Louis’s trick was to dilute his paints with water, then fold the canvas around them. You can’t really tell from the image online, but in real life, there’s this crazy soft transition in the lines of paint from the saturated center, moving out to the edge of the line as the paint softens.
So I sort of like this idea of deliberately obscuring a photo, to turn it into fodder for your own imagination.
Contrast this with an ongoing discussion happening on this site here where the poster’s concern is eliminating noise, maximum image sharpness, good color reproduction and not blowing out any highlights, even in the unimportant parts of the picture.
I could talk all day about this, so I’ll stop now.
Last thing @patdavid, thanks for posting the link to the Sorrenti series. Fantastic shots, and I agree the one you posted in this thread is a damn masterpiece. And yes, that shadow over the face was deliberate. 100%. Brilliant!