The Photographer's Found Abstractions

"The possibility of discovery is every­where," says Paul Caponigro, who made the photograph of fractured rock surfaces at the right. The same words could have been said by Harry Calla­han, whose picture of a Wisconsin church window appears above. Both men have learned to see in the world around them distinctive patterns and textures, and, by isolating and framing them in the camera's crisp rectangular field, transform them into works of abstract art. Most photographers would have stood farther back, so as to in­clude in their composition the whole church, steeple and all, or the entire rock formation and its surroundings -producing, perhaps, nice pictures but hardly as compelling ones as these. "I'm interested in revealing the subject in a new way, to intensify it," says Cal­lahan of his approach. "A photograph is able to capture a moment people can't always see with their eyes."

 

Harry Callahan = the bombilla