That’s what photography does: abstract. All photographs are abstract at the most basic level because they pull out and preserve a moment in time and space from the ongoingness and continuity of things. Whatever else photographers might be up to–journalism, art, documenting the family picnic, messing around, whatever–they are in the business of abstracting.

But that’s only the beginning. Once that moment abstracted from time and space is on the photographer’s computer, the fun begins. Well, I have a lot of fun shooting. So, more accurately, the fun continues. In the case of Nevermore, I wanted the image to also express the crow’s rude, raspy “Caw, caw, caw”! A couple hours and some judicious use of a few photo-editing tools resulted in this. How’d I do? Do you hear the crow?

It worked well enough for the folks at KBM Gallery, an online-only venue based in California. Nevermore was selected for their current show, “Halloween 2024.” You can see the exhibit here. It will be up until November 8, 2024.

So I took an abstraction and made it more abstract by messing with to make it “speak” even though it is a mere image. But back in 1929, Surrealist painter René Magritte made the more basic point that I made above, specifically that an image is never the thing itself but always a representation. He did that by painting a realistic image of a pipe, then writing “This Is Not a Pipe” (in French) below the pipe. The title of the painting is The Treachery of Images.

This Is Not an Ad is a play on that concept, plus a comment on the advertising inundated world we live in. I suppose I could explain that further, but I’d rather you look up and read about Magritte and what he was up to. And think about automobiles and advertising and photographs and how you decide what they mean.

I’ll share just one more tidbit: My Master’s thesis research was a study of children and their ability to distinguish between news and advertising photos when all text and context had been removed. I can just hear their little voices saying, “That’s an ad,” upon seeing this. But it’s not, and not just because I don’t sell images to advertisers.

Curator Diane Williams was sufficiently intrigued to select This Is Not an Ad for a show titled “Abstract Dimensions,” currently underway at Epperson Gallery at 1400 Pomona St. in Crockett, CA. The show will end November 3, 2024.