Excerpt from the Article:
In traditional landscape photography, context is important in visual storytelling, and especially in grand scenic images. Context helps anchor a scene by including foreground, midground, and background (i.e., the sky). Wide-angle landscape images often include many elements in front of the camera to transport the viewer to the location, portray rare weather occurrences, or showcase a place’s grand beauty. On the other end of the spectrum, abstract images often exclude context. An abstract photograph may isolate a fragment of a natural scene to remove its inherent context from the viewer.
Defining abstract photography can be challenging. One definition may include images created using photography materials and equipment that are not immediately associated with the object world.
In his online book Photographic Psychology: Image and Psyche, photographer and psychology professor John Suler proposes an alternate and perhaps broader definition. He states, "An abstract photograph draws away from that which is realistic or literal. It draws away from natural appearances and recognizable subjects in the actual world. Some say it departs from true meaning, existence, and reality. It stands apart from the concrete whole with its purpose instead depending on conceptual meaning and intrinsic form …”
