Lyle Rexer explains how photography is not necessarily based on our memories, recording particular moments as one often assumes but “most photographs, when they are taken, look forward in time or…there are many photographs that when they are excised from their particular moment, actually have no time.” The images Rexer selected for the exhibition "The Edge of Vision: Abstraction in Contemporary Photography," highlight this aspect and question our essential way of looking at other photographs and at reality in general.

This clip is part of the series of video interviews including the curator, Lyle Rexer, and artists from the exhibition on view at Aperture Gallery, "The Edge of Vision: Abstraction in Contemporary Photography" from May 15 to July 16, 2009.

From the beginning, abstraction has been intrinsic to photography, and its persistent popularity reveals much about the medium. The Edge of Vision, curated by Lyle Rexer, showcases the work of nineteen international contemporary photographers who base their practice in some form of abstraction from highly conceptual to more documentary approaches. The works explore diverse aspects of the photographic experience, including the chemistry of traditional photography, the direct capture of light without a camera, temporal extensions, digital sampling of found images, radical cropping, and various deliberate destabilizations of photographic reference. This abstract use of photography often combines other mediums such as painting, sculpture, drawing or video. All artists join a broad contemporary trend to look critically and freshly at a medium commonly considered transparent.

The exhibition is accompanied by a new book, "The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography" by Lyle Rexer (Aperture, May 2009). Illustrated with more than 150 images, this unprecedented and highly anticipated book documents this phenomenon internationally from the early days of the medium through the present day.