photographic abstraction #26

Although I keep thinking that I won’t find enough suitable images to continue my series of abstract photographs, I’m still coming up with new ideas and new motifs. Of course, a lot of the images I produce—and reject—are too amorphous to allow me to suggest a meaning through a title, although I think that you will find the present collection both varied and interesting.

What is going on in the first picture? To me, it is a perfect illustration of chaos.

chaos theory

I believe that most people are familiar with Descartes’ famous dictum, cogito ergo sum (‘I think therefore I am’)—indeed, I’ve had it quoted at me on several occasions by someone trying to make a philosophical point, invariably without their realizing that this statement assumes that ‘mind’ and ‘body’ are somehow separate, which is probably an error. The most cogent rebuttal of Cartesian dualism was made by British philosopher Gilbert Ryle, who called it ‘the ghost in the machine’:

ghost in the machine

You don’t need me to point out that the next image isn’t hair, but it is something that’s been brushed. I can’t remember what though.

hair today, gone tomorrow

The impact was on the left, but the target was in the middle. In other words, the attacker missed:

missed

The title I’ve given to the next image refers to the term’s cartographic usage rather than to remission of pain:

relief

It isn’t often that an image is so striking that I simply have to get off my bike and take a photograph, but this is what happened with my final image, which I’ve named after one of the few musical acts of the twenty-first century that I consider worth listening to.

white stripes

recent posts in this series
Photographic Abstraction #21
Photographic Abstraction #22
Photographic Abstraction #23
Photographic Abstraction #24
Photographic Abstraction #25