THE PROMISE OF KINETIC ABSTRACT PHOTOGRAPHY

The Hungarian painter and photographer Laszlo Moholy-Nagy believed that light could be manipulated to create new perceptions of space and time, and so, a century ago, he created a Light-Space Modulator as a tool to kinetically explore the relationship between art, technology, and human perception. His experiments ultimately led him to conclude in his seminal book, Vision in Motion (1947), that kinetic photography can help us understand how “light creation” informs us.

By “light creation,” Moholy-Nagy was referring to the physical processes by which light is emitted, while others, most notably the pioneering Russian abstract painter Wassily Kandinsky, impliedly related it to the biblical account of God creating light on the first day of creation when writing in 1914 in Concerning The Spiritual in Art, that “in each manifestation (of art) is the seed of a striving toward the abstract, ... setting in the balance the spiritual value of (its) elements.

In 1957, following Moholy-Nagy’s lead, the Dusseldorf group Zero experimented with light creation by constructing “light reliefs,” made of repetitive light vibrations to reveal an otherwise secreted beauty, as though offering the experience of prayer. Presumably, its members believed spiritual enlightenment could be attained through such abstraction.

We are now entering a new era of understanding of how ‘light creation’ informs us, in furtherance of the traditional quest for metaphysical meaning beyond the abstract work itself. In 2016, physiologist and Nobel laureate Eric Kandel published Reductionism in Art and Brain Science , in which he provided a neurological basis to conclude that meaning in abstract art resides in the conversation between the work and a viewer’s memories by demonstrating that individualized emotional responses are elicited in specialized regions in the brain that process light (color) when confronted with abstract images. Kandel’s work not only furthers Maholy-Nagy’s vision of integrating technology and art, but validates that which Kandinsky intuitively wrote a century ago, that the mass of one’s discoveries are composed of a knowledge of light.

Given that resonance within a viewer’s memory is a necessary contribution to the meaning of a work of abstract art, it is fascinating to examine the degree to which an artist can control a viewer’s response to the work, especially if, as Kandel implies, a specific region of the brain can be targeted to elicit a specific emotional response. For sure, painters have over the centuries have shown impressive skill in controlling reflected light through manipulation of dyes mixed with oil, acrylics and other physical substances. In this regard, by correlating color to sound, Kandinsky offered a systematic approach to control and convey meaning through reflected light. He “composed” paintings by correlating specific sounds to specific hues. Yellows are loud, like a trumpet. Blues are calm, like a cello. Green is soundless, a color of stillness. By coupling color with spacial relationships so as to impose an element of Time, his abstract compositions sought to prove that abstract art could be received emotively in the same way as musical composition. Americans Stanton Macdonald-Wright (1890-1973) and Morgan Russell (1886-1953) also “composed” art on a color theory they coined Synchromism, a name that associates colors with musical rhythms. Mondrian expressed this idea as well in Broadway Boogie-Woogie which simultaneously conveys how he feels about jazz and the vibrancy of New York City life.

It has been widely written that the documentary prowess of photography spawned the past century of abstract expressionism in painting. As French film theorist Andre Bazin wrote, photography is “simultaneously a liberation and an accomplishment; it freed Western painting, once and for all, from its obsession with realism, and allowed it to recover its aesthetic autonomy.” This move into primacy of pure feeling to express the subjective anatomy of the human condition spawned many abstract art movements. Among the most recognized are Constructivism – shaping reality by effectuating light and movement through dynamic geometric forms, Suprematism – supremacy of feeling or perception of real objects, of pure visual sensation transcending physicality, German Expressionism – an exploration of the spiritual values of abstracted forms and prismatic colors, Neo-Plasticism – insisting on absolute mutual equivalence for all constituent elements as a blueprint for peace and world order, and Futurism – imparting movement through chromatic and linear shifts to capture the dynamism and energy of the modern world. Other modern explorations similarly seek truth in first person interior experience, rather than third-person objectivity.

Popularly overlooked through this past century of abstract expressionism is the contribution of photography that began a century ago. A re-examination of those early twentieth century roots is deserved, as technological advances have pushed the photographic arts, and especially kinetic abstract photography, into the mainstream of abstract explorations, just as Moholy-Nagy presciently recognized when remarking that “continuity and composition will be established through the direct impact of purely optical laws and visual fundamentals.” With abstract photography too we can be moved by what we see in the same way that we are moved by what we hear.

But for most of the twentieth century, as abstract expressionism planted its flag around the world, photography remained misclassified as a documentary medium. In 1862, the French poet and essayist, Charles Baudelaire, castigated those who believed photography to be an art form, considering the photographic industry to be “the refuge of all failed painters with too little talent, or too lazy to complete their studies.” Even in 1974, John Berger, an award-winning art critic, painter and novelist, disappointingly opined that because photographic images are infinitely reproducible, they are, by definition, not unique, and are but “records of things seen... no closer to works of art than cardiograms... (and that) composition in the profound, formative sense of the word cannot enter into photography because it “does not deal in constructs.” Worse still, in 1977, The French semiologist Roland Barthes opined that “the word image should be linked to the root “imitari,” as if photography was confined to the realm of imitation.

Calling out such biases, American photographer Walker Evans lamented that “the real significance of photography was submerged soon after its discovery.” Significant contributors to the abstract photography movement that emerged early in the twentieth century were Maholy-Nagy, Peter Keetman, Theodore Roszak, Andre Kertesz, Man-Ray, Gyorgy Kepes, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Paul Strand, Alexandr Rodchenko, Marta Hoeppffner, Aaron Siskind, and Andreas Feinenger, to name just a few. While the work of these artists could be said to have leaned heavily on Constructivist and Suprematist concepts by focusing on the sensory effects of spacial and color relationships, many saw abstract photography as a unique means of comprehending emotional existence. Andre Bazin forthrightedly wrote: “Photography can even surpass creative power... (because it) actually contributes something to the order of natural creation instead of providing a substitute for it...(a) most important event in the history of the plastic arts.” In 1964, kinetic artist Kenneth Martin was more direct, by proclaiming that through the use of kinetics “it is possible to express life.”

Excellent books and essays have been written on the photographic arts as means of abstract expression, most notably Lyle Rexler’s The Edge of Vision - The Rise of Abstraction in Photography, and a Tate publication, Shape of Light - 100 Years of Photography and Abstract Art. However, such retrospectives mostly omit kinetic photography, in part because 21st century advances in digital technology have allowed it to achieve a non-derivative genesis in abstract expressionism. To better understand this development, a brief explanation of some of the methodologies involved is helpful.

Unlike “light painting,” which captures images by moving a light source itself in conjunction with time-lapse techniques, kinetic images are formed by shaping static light through camera movement. This generally involves two distinct methodologies. Most commonly, a camera is moved by hand or mechanical device in a deliberate manner at the point of shutter release to manipulate the light within or surrounding a physical object so as to achieve a particular effect, most often a blurring. This technique is often referred to as Intentional Camera Movement (“ICM”). The Italian Futurists eagerly grasped the power of utilizing movement of the camera to enable one to capture what the Italian photographer Roberto Polillo described as the “expressive potential of the scene... expressing its truth.” Camera movement can also be used to stretch light unaccompanied by representational form (“Kinetic Composition” or “KC”). KC’s light stretching images are frequently characterized as serendipitous, created by less controlled means of camera movement, such as shaking, tossing or twirling. This characterization fails in two fundamental respects. First, as Polillo wrote when describing noted his journey into ICM, the precise movement that one chooses to use at any given moment becomes instinctual and ultimately deliberate through practice and repetition. Accordingly, what at first may be discovered and captured by chance, can thereafter be mechanically reproduced and repeated to create images of choice. Thus, ICM and KC should not be differentiated as a matter of the degree of movement. Second, ICM is not theoretical, but is an abstracting technique, somewhat in the same vein as impressionist painting manipulates light to provide the viewer a more sensory experience of a real object or scene. Unlike ICM, the “object” of KC is light itself. It would be proper to analogize KC to the gestural and quasi-Rayonist work of Jackson Pollak, whose artistic vision was to simultaneously convey the outcome of the work to the sensation of making it, so as to simultaneously convey the energy of movement and the image born from it. See, for example, the kinetic photograph appearing immediately above.

Whereas history has not fully acknowledged the photographic arts participation in the quest to understand the world in abstract form, the future holds a spot for KC to become a mainstream contributor to understanding ourselves through abstract language. If as Kandel wrote, “visual information begins as reflected light,” and if we accept Moholoy-Nagy’s axiom that memories are composed of a knowledge of light, then a kinetic photograph consisting solely of shaped light could be considered a means of memory resurrection if composed in concert with radio-neurologic observation. More plainly stated, a kinetic abstract photograph has the power to evoke the moment of suddenly remembering something, how it made you feel, and what it meant to you, which is nothing less than a moment of learning.

However, abstract expression of all forms faces a new challenge: abstract art produced by artificial intelligence. Are its abstract images, as Roland Barthes would have said, forever tethered to the root imitari, no matter how well AI synthesizes a century or more of abstract art? Or is abstract art produced by AI simply the ultimate integration of technology into the arts that Moholy-Nagy sought to advance so very long ago? As emotionally stirring as computer-driven work may be, can it be said to be an informing means of light creation? Can AI understand, for example, how the Hungarian photographer Gyorgy Kepes produced his Optical Distortions, or even what they represents without resorting to Kepes own explanations about his explorations into the connection between art and technology? Can AI ever be capable of spirituality, or even understanding itself? Whatever answers may be posited to these questions, if personal growth is to remain within human power to control, what better way than to do so through a hand that holds a camera, guided by an intuitive force bound to personal experience? To be informed through the procurement and distillation of memories through light creation: this is the promise of kinetic abstract photography.

Andrew Wiener, April 2025