The Nature of Abstraction

I found myself really drawn to Chayka’s description of the necessity and value of the images and video found on TikTok, and how many of them are abstracts of our lives. They’re snippets of parts of our day or night, our travels and even mirrors of our thoughts, but through the images, we can imagine a life. Or even better, we can imagine living that life. 

I thought about the many photos I've taken over the years and how some of my favorite images are the abstract ones, the ones that seem to be, as Chayka mentioned, missing context. But it's that abstract nature that tells a piece of story within a story, not because it's unfinished, but because through their "incompleteness," they seem full of meaning. And in turn, fully complete. Each in their own way, and separately.  

 Okay, that last one's just for fun. But you get what I'm saying 😉

Work Cited: Chayka, Kyle. "TikTok and the Vibes Revival." The New Yorker, 26 Apr. 2021, pp. 1-5.