Neue EQ; Cloud Abstractions After Stieglitz

Neue EQ - cloud abstractions after Stieglitz. These pictures are all shot in square format on an iPhone with absolutely no cropping. Some of the photographs are not edited beyond removing color and contrast adjustment, while others have been extremely altered, but they all started as clouds, and are shown as they were shot- nothing added, nothing taken away. It is so easy to gaze at clouds and become meditative, and to see images in their shapes and textures. A photograph of a cloud or cloud formation in color is generally recognizable as a cloud, a real object. Once it is rendered black and white it is more easily engaged with as an abstract form. Once it is an abstract form, there is no reason to hold back from editing and interpreting the image, removing it even further from objective representation, and thereby creating a new opportunity for meditative and imaginative viewing. In the 1920s and 30s Alfred Stieglitz made some of the earliest photographs intended to free the recognizable subject from literal interpretation, presenting clouds as abstractions. He called the photos Equivalents. So I refer to my ongoing body of work as Neue EQ to acknowledge my inspiration.