It's easy to think of a work of art as being 'abstract' when it's not representative of an object, a scene, a portrait, etc. or is clearly in a style that can be described as 'conceptual' or 'modern'. But the photographer doesn't usually have the artist's freedom to create from scratch in the same way. The entire photographic process is predicated upon translating reality (however subjective that may be) into a reproducible image. He doesn't have the luxury of choice in what to keep in and what to leave out the way the artist does, except by changing viewpoint or by digital manipulation. It can therefore be a challenge to produce an appealing photographic 'abstract' that doesn't still constitute an image of something. So here are some images that have an element of abstraction in them: not truly abstract in the classical artistic sense, maybe, but some are as close as you can get photographically.
Abstracts
