The two  bark abstracts below  were my initial attempt at abstract poetics with  black and white film (IlFord HP5 Plus 400 ASA). I was reading Lyle Rexer's The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography at the time. Most of the recent photographic abstractions are digital and  in colour eg., the various artists in the Helsinki School.   I had little interest in the cameraless photogram or directly changing the surface of unexposed photographic papers by burning, soaking, inscribing them etc as did Marco Breuer. 

Could abstraction work now by returning to back and white film?  So after Leica  replaced the damaged range finder of  the M4 I   decided to experiment by using 35mm black and white film.  I was more or less picking up from where I'd left off prior to the photographic culture's  shift to digital technology in the first decade of 21st century.   

I had stopped photographing in  35mm black and white in the 1990s when the range finder of the M4  was damaged and it could not be repaired in Australia.   Since my return to photography  around 2006 I have only photographed with  35mm in colour using  an M4-P rangefinder.  

I experimented by photographing a variety of subject matter and I enjoyed both  re-learning to see in black and white and making the photos with the M4 rangefinder.   It was like the old days,  even though I was much careful and considered in making a photo. Film is expensive. 

The scanned results of the  initial rolls of black and white film did not impress me at all. The images were  so grainy. I was also disappointed in the tonality achieved using the VuScan software so that I could continue to use my  old Epson V700 with the Mac Studio.   I thought that the grainy look looked ok for the urban photos that I'd done,  but not for the abstractions or for the  poetics.

When the M4-P was recently damaged by salt water I decided to stick with colour film for the poetics and digital for my everyday camera. My judgement was that 35mm black and white had been surpassed by digital.   I didn't bother ordering any more 35mm b+w  film on my  last film order from B+H in New York just before Xmas.   I only bought Pro-pack rolls of 120 film and I switched to Kodak T Max 400. 

I have been returning to the archive off and on and I've slowly started to change my mind.  Hence this post. I am encouraged enough to scan another roll 35mm b+w (Ilford HP 5 Plus) with the Epson V850 Pro and Silverfast software.  I'll  see what turns up.