Bruno Dubner, from the 'Vigilia' series
Abstraction and photography seem to be terms completely opposite. Such a thing as an abstract photography sounds paradoxical. Anyway, the photographer Bruno Dubner (born 1978, Buenos Aires) tries to find the way to link those concepts by constructing an image as abstract as it could be and putting the main emphasis in light and white. "There are several ways in which a photograph could look abstract: movement, out of focus, superposition, but it looks like it should always be the track or the sign of "something". I believe photography goes far beyond the photographic take", the artist said. In these works, Dubner obtains nothing but the light the objects photographed emit; that track or sign together with the power of hazard, clearly relates his work with the main ideas of the abstract expressionists artists he admires.
It is interesting the way Dubner finds to combine white with the meaning of vigil. Vigil refers to those moments you are unable to sleep, especially at night. And the night is the perfect environment for the artist to explore how photography could print the track of the light. Because when we say light we also refer, by omission, to dark or darkness; when we talk about white we also refer to its counterpart or to other colors. Light's whiteness subsumes every other color as well as it brings us an entire world to our eyes while making things visible. Light could guide our movements and give us reference of time and space. But the artist is not interested at all in that kind of light.
Some time ago, Bruno Dubner started photographing the light penetrating his home at night, most certainly under the influence of vigil. The entire place turned into a dark room where light revealed several feelings and thoughts as well as created situations he never experienced before. He discovered they could only come clear to him under those circumstances where all lights were off and only the presence of rays penetrating the scene detonated a sensitive "domino effect". He photographs doors, windows, walls; everything turns visible only because of the cars passing by in the street providing some kind of luminal source randomly. Dubner is also interested in the moonlight through the shades or just the lights coming out of the computer; everything is subtle. His Rolleiflex 6 x 6 cameras are his main company during those nights of intense vigil; long periods of exposure that in some cases could be of almost eight hours, bring out the result we appreciate in his "abstract photographs".
What we mainly see is nothing but white, nothing but the process itself where the light creates abstract images. Even when those objects photographed could be easily recognized in a normal situation, the way in which Dubner´s camera captures them, make those objects represent figures we could relate to no certain referent at all. There is where the spectator gets involved with the artist's work, because people could play with Dubner´s photographs whether using their fantasy to see whatever they want to see and being the ones who determine what is represented by the purity of white, or they could try to discover the real shape the artist hide behind white's mysterious veil.
Maria Caroina Baulo
Maria Caroina Baulo, pictured here with Rene Burri, is a freelance art writer based in Buenos Aires.
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