Abstract Images

If this doesn't appeal, do look at the extra which on any other day would have been my blip.

The questions
Can photography do abstract?
If it can, can it produce worthwhile images (art?)?
How do you avoid / can you avoid viewers asking 'what real thing is this?'. Or does that not matter?

I've been photographing line, form, colour and geometries since long before I joined blip, without ever really thinking about whether they are abstract, or even what that means. But for the last year or so, I've been doing a bit of a quiet exploration elsewhere on blip as well as having helpful conversations here about abstract photography (thank you Sara, especially).

That's shown me two different things. In forms of art where an image is built up incrementally, like drawing and painting, each mark is an abstraction from the 'real' thing and the final image can be either representational or abstract. In photography, where you start with the whole image, abstraction is about excluding elements that make the image identifiable as a 'real' thing. 

Today I went to Shape of Light - 100 years of photography and abstract art at Tate Modern, alone and uncommitted so I could spend as long as I liked looking and thinking. And I learnt two more things. 

1. Photographers have been creating abstract images for over 100 years. 

2. There are many ways of doing it. Such as:

a. looking through a prism or distorting glass (a little like using a Photoshop filter?).

b. putting objects or chemicals on light sensitive paper (I think these are more like drawing or painting, but in a different medium, rather than photography).

c.  finding something in the real world where the geometry is strong which makes it harder to see the image as a representation. My favourite was German Lorca's Mondrian Window which made me think I should have done this one in mono.
Also:
Ellsworth Kelly's Sidewalk
Margeret Bourke-White's Radio Tower
Paulo Pires's Manoeuvring Yard
Sameer Makarius's Nets of Mar del Plata's Fishermen
Rodchenko's Lumber
Edward Steichen's 'Between the Walls' (can't find an image of it on the internet)

d. setting up an abstract scene (e.g. bits of paper and/or string) and photographing it, like Nathan Lerner's Eggs and Box

e. cutting up a photo and reassembling it like Luo Bonian

f. using a small part of an object e.g. Bill Brandt's bodies

g. assembling a series of similar images e.g Jared Bark

So I realise my experiments are a century old. The pioneers of my ignorance are dead. I imitate without knowing.