Figuratively Abstract (2019-2023)

Figuratively Abstract

Fine Art Photography Project (2019-2023)

Farhad Zoghi

“Figuratively Abstract” is a fine art series that has a documentary aspect too. But the documentary aspect of this project certainly is not simply a matter of reporting objects found, things only there, met by chance, but the addition to these of a look, the work of including within the object the look that constitutes it. Documenting some parts of the world and isolating those same parts from their reality and in this way abstracting them, making something new out of the subjects before the camera.

Sometimes the colours, spaces and the sheer abstract qualities of the world seen are foregrounded and sometimes the materiality of the world is highlighted. In some photos you will see that the depth of the image is reduced so that the figurative aspect of reality and the background of the photos are flattened into the same plane; and the colour of the walls and their light seems to overcome and absorb the figures, equalising different layers of the photos into the surface.

The division of space into colour patches and the absorption of figures or different materials into their own particular space and colour and surface are experimented in different variations. In many instances, the photos hesitate between serving a representative function and detaching themselves from being representative objects and becoming abstract constructions, as if these patches of colour and space were simultaneously figurative and abstract. In many other examples, the form, shape, texture, reflection, luminosity or sharpness of anything before the camera are subjected to be seen and felt and the documentary aspect of the image is much less about an event or moment in real life or the general living situation of humans but about the materiality and abstract qualities of the things seen.

In this project, I’m trying to present photos primarily to be observed, identified and interrogated. Implicated and present in the regard directed towards the subjects before the camera is that regard itself, things are felt and questioned by my camera as they come to me, as I encounter them and as my look alters during the time (both during taking the photo and manipulating it after the capture), the look of the camera and the photos alter.