Favourite slide of the week

This week's topic covers Modernist photography: straight photography and abstraction in photography. I chose this image as it represents this week's topic the most in my personal opinion. It's Dali Atomicus, taken by Halsman Philippe. It looks so fun and candid and it gave a sort of unpredictable vibe to this entire image. It's like a modern, staged, straight photography. 

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Apparently they planned for this image like on the count of a certain number everyone throws the objects into the space and the photographer snaps at that instant. Dali looked adorable in mid air, which reminds me very much of the jump shots we will take with our friends. Surrealist painter photographed in that "decisive" moment, staged but candid with a modernist photography direction. So many elements that can be discussed in this one image. 

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It has such graphic approach to this, composed yet not really. Photography has come to this stage where the photographers were already familiar with the medium and has started to explore further, therefore, they approached it more artistically and conceptually. We can see abstraction during this period in photography, objects that looked so simple yet when abstracted it looked like a totally different element. It's with so many years of intense experimentations and discoveries that made photographers like Paul Strand and Lewis Hine to look closely on the qualities of the subjects for abstraction. It contests pure photography with such a drastic difference in approach and intentions. 

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