Hmm interesting. My thought is "reality" as perceived by the senses is a survival instinct. Like the reality of a stone that is thrown and directly coming towards one . One can ignore this reality at their own peril. On the other hand any representation of experience "reality" is an Abstraction. This type of abstraction mankind has been doing for more than. 30000 years . Your image does raise questions ...what is reality ? What is beauty ?

My thought is "reality" as perceived by the senses is a survival instinct.

Raj, that is an interesting view tying "survival instinct" with "reality".

Like the reality of a stone that is thrown and directly coming towards one . One can ignore this reality at their own peril.

I think Kant was prudent enough to state, "thing in itself" exist though we can't say more about it. In that sense it is better to avoid the stone hurled at us

How important Anthropic principle,Copernican principle and Mediocrity principle are for our own life/work is a philosophic and *may be an* artistic decision for us to pursue! At the end, I think our life span completes with these never ending confusions about our own life. After a point, saying anything beyond "I don't know" appears very pretentious to me! Of course that should not limit us from thinking and innovating!

"All those which are not real" for defining an "abstract"

If this is true , how can nature be abstract? Isn't nature real?

If this is true , how can nature be abstract? Isn't nature real?

That’s the point I was trying to make, Nature is not real!! Our perceived reality is only partial. Every image I made during last 25 years is an abstract in that sense! That said it may sound very uninteresting. But then it not very different than,

“ogate eanee srishti
Balinarthavadeno..”

as described in “Kagga”...

Very interesting compo, pushing reality to abstractness!
Btw, I am finding all philosophies, abstract!
Regards.

Abstraction for me is that part of the real for which meaning is yet to arrive. It is also used to put things in broad categories. A bird, animal, flower, human kind, God …. are all abstractions till we start knowing about them, their particularities, peculiarities or uniformities, significances so that we can tell them apart from ourselves and the world. For example the entire family of birds with all their diversity are abstracted as "bird" for the layperson. And how about a day in our lives? A day which we define as the time between two consecutive sunrises. Imagine a person in one such day. Though we might know his basic attributes but for what duration of time do we actually interact with the real him/her. These would probably be the moments when reality is present before us. But what of the time when the person turns his back and disappears for us. Does S'he cease to exist? While it might be an abstraction for us with the person retiring to His/her quarters but factual presence appears elsewhere for some else of which we have no idea. James Joyce captures one such day the 16th of June in the life of the protagonist Leopold bloom in his Novel Ulysses; an immensely unreadable text spanning 730 pages!!! One day and 730 pages and I'm sure the author must've been constrained by time otherwise he would find more activities in the day still left to be de-constructed. However out of these activities very few eventuate into significances that ping us.

In the interregnum of events, activities happen out of definite volition or chance but they become noticeable only in their extra-ordinariness in the sense that they concern us in some way. Rest is all business as usual. So, we ask how was your day? “Exceptional, if we did something exciting or met an old friend or pick up a fight and just okay if it involved just going through the motions. Likewise, in photo making too. We pick up significances and ignore the things in-between, or going further, we try to pick up significances within the in-between things. Coming to the picture here, about something which often does not attract our attention and in that it is part of an abstracted day. Here, we see a man and a woman, probably a couple, carrying out their daily chores. The man lifts what looks like a protective lid of a cock-put to let out the hens for the day. The woman to the right appears engrossed in examining some piece of cloth. Some pieces of tarpaulin coverings await deployment for designated purposes. Birds roosting on top of the tree just keep sitting there- soaking up the sun unspectacularly. There is no sign of an alarm in the birds due to approaching man. They seem to cohabit the space and used to each other’s presence. Everything is in a state of passing. We are able to see it all because somebody has photographed it. For a moment, if we look away, it would make up for a slice from an abstracted day. Things are themselves as they appear. Has the photographer by his arrival altered the very sovereign domain of things in themselves? Looking inside once again into the picture we see man and woman looking in different directions, each engrossed in their own selves. In that sense their individual presences have not yet coalescd for each other yet. From the ease with which they handle their chores we can make out that they are not new to the work at hand. Pelicans on top of the Imli? Tree are set against an equally unspectacular sky. The foliage of trees runs into each other uncharacteristically. In fact the whole scene is one of assimilated presence. The photographer has tried to downplay human presence by aiming higher, including only their torsos. But even with that some gender markers are noticeable; ie. Type of work being performed by man involves lifting unwieldly stuff requiring force and gait, while the woman, fully clad (contrasted to the man wearing a vest) looks intently at something requiring tending. But are these markers not self-evident through our fore-knowledge and thus not of photographer’s making? For me the only question which remains is “Has the photographer tried to interpret the scene while attempting a “things in themselves”? Not really.
The only nit could be that he has tried to compose the scene Rule of thirds at the sky and the trees, white of pelicans offset by the white vest and the entire scene appearing to be balanced by the posture of man carrying his stuff. With this exception
We do see here "things in themselves".
Thanks for sharing Ganesh!

Dear Nirlep, thanks taking time to write to share your thoughts in detail.

Coming to first part of your reply, if I understood it right, you relied on not being able to attach a "meaning". This I think is more abstract compared to attempting at defining abstract in terms of "not-real" or "not physical". Many years ago I had downloaded Kindle version of the book Ulysses. Yet to read a page though Now I am interested in opening it some day!

Coming to the other part of your reply,

In the interregnum of events, activities happen out of definite volition or chance but they become noticeable only in their extra-ordinariness in the sense that they concern us in some way.
"Likewise, in photo making too. We pick up significances and ignore the things in-between, or going further, we try to pick up significances within the in-between things.

How much we miss just because we don't understand them!

For a moment, if we look away, it would make up for a slice from an abstracted day.

I had a similar feeling which made the whole thing "abstract". The dominant blue tarpaulin seem to disconnect everything further. Many things are happening in the frame where "nothing" is happening!! Is that an abstract? That is what I thought.

The only nit could be that he has tried to compose the scene Rule of thirds at the sky and the trees, white of pelicans offset by the white vest and the entire scene appearing to be balanced by the posture of man carrying his stuff. With this exception
We do see here "things in themselves".

I agree, Nirlep, that is a nit, albeit an unintended one! I think this is where your compositions score!!

Revisiting my earlier reading of Ganesh’s “abstraction versus reality” I feel several things were overlooked, mainly because of deep seated anthropocentric point of view. I could only laugh at my naïve sense of comprehension of things in themselves”. While I tried to comprehend the larger plot about “things in them selves”–my reading had no mention of “things “ in the picture. Rather I looked at the animate (see the bias here too!) alone–man/woman/birds/trees and ascribed to them the role of things too, making them play a dual role ; the role of things as well as of beings possessing selves. What about the things; the actual things in the picture? Like the canvas spreads, the cockpit cover, bamboo poles?
Implicitly, things in themselves in Kantian sense would have things to have selves, or at least a character, some uncanny, enigmatic trait for the very reason that we don’t know about them, or there’s no way we can tell them apart from our limited knowledge about them. The things in the picture; do they throw some light on their character as things in themselves?
Out of the infinite form things could attain; it is only through the form presented to us that some contact with them made and understanding, attempted. Like in the picture the blue canvas in the middle of the community of canvasses, looks sometimes like a kkk hoodie, teepee or a hut. The forms in what they appear to be to a viewer must have some historical-mythical-social connect within his/her consciousness. It is also known that these things may not be in the form they’ve have been captured in the picture. Possible forms could be a shelter for animals, some covering for the household, a makeshift bathroom or simply to pack and carry stuff besides myriad other uses from time to time. Their current forms may be thought of being closest to their natural forms if left un-deployed. It is a different question that they have gone through a process in being there; the process of their manufacture. But leaving that aside we have to take them as things as given to us just like a stone or a mountain, which also go under a process in being what they are, or, in appearing to be what they are.
In being un-deployed their use value can only be conjectured or deduced. So apart from being the objects of conjecture they are just random forms at the moment. And precisely it is in this trait of theirs that they become enigmatic.

What surprised me on second reading was what they actually accomplish in being just things. They relativise things in the scene. Even though the movement in the scene is nothing spectacular which has been ensured by the photographer through deft use of space and objects therein, yet by the presence of frayed canvas sheets a binary is created in the picture. Another photographic purpose they serve is provide the foreground, which could be simply ornamental, filler of space, part of the text or subtext or simply space through which the viewer telescopes into the frame. At the current moment however, they reflect the mood of the back-ground, also in its un-deployed, pensive state, caught as ciphers just like the canvas or the bamboos.

Another pointer at their thingness having a self is their ability to obstruct vision. They hide space and challenge viewer’s perception. By being their opaque selves a mystery is created in an otherwise placid scene. Opaqueness here no longer remains a physical attribute but becomes a quality.

I’m tempted to summarize my lurking perception that the foreground with its curious, uncanny canvasses has characterized the scene as much as what goes on in the background.