Stan Farrow and a Glass Block ...
- Chris Hilton
- Jan 4
- 2 min read
Stan delivered an interesting talk to the club on Abstract Photography ... a difficult thing to define but Stan started off by delivering us this 'dictionary' definition.
"Art in which the portrayal of elements from the visible world plays little or no part"
Picasso went further and said "you must always start with something. Afterwards you can remove all traces of reality"
Stan showed us a lot of images with different themes, using a whole host of different techniques, and for the most part, they fulfilled that definition ... there were 'some' pictures, with an understandable element in them but those parts of the image were not important in themselves, they were merely a foil for Stan to hang his art on.
Many of Stan's images were 'found' abstracts ... small details within larger scenes. This was the approach he took when he was working towards his Fellowship at the RPS.
He's in good company ... following in the footsteps of the likes of Aron Siskind and who can forget our sadly departed friend Tim Edwards from The Dorset Independent Photographers?
Once you start to see these details, they are everywhere and it was noticing the light and the distortions through a wall of glass blocks in a public toilet that led Stan to buying one for himself (a glass block that is, not a public convenience). And then you're into a whole new ball game, in a home studio you are in control of every aspect of the final image and perhaps it is there that you can be at your most abstract. It was the Ukrainian painter , Mark Rothko who professed to be "interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on".
And when you find yourself starting with an idea, instead of what's in front of you, it can lead you to all sorts of places ...
We will welcome in the New Year with a talk by our Chair, Andrew Crawford ... it will be about his progression through the various levels to attain his Fellowship at the RPS but expect plenty of abstraction along the way.
Close on the heels of that will be a discussion night at the club about Abstract Photography more generally.
