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Minimalist photography arises from the notion of [[minimalism[[ in art, which is a style used by multitudinous 20th artists, that uses a minimal number of elements including colour, objects, shapes and texture.^[3] The aim of minimalist photography is to express a concept, in order to bring forth a distinctive visual experience or elicit an emotional response from the viewer.^[4] In the world of photography, it is viewed as an exceptionally intuitive and personal concept, entrusting interpretation and understanding to the audience perspective of the art.^[5]

 

Minimalist photography stems from its initial art movement minimalism, which is a movement in the 1950s emerged in the United States, which is also known as Minimalist Art, Reductive Art or ABC Art.^[6] As the name denotes, minimalism which is originated in the word minimum means the slightest or the littlest amount required.^[7][8] In the art world, minimalism employs a limited amount of elements to construct a coveted effect.^[9] Minimalist Art appeared as a response to the abstract expressionist movement of the 1960s, originating partially in the the geometric abstract art movement and Modernism.^[10] Furthermore, majority of the historical art movements that emanated in the past decades, for instance, the development of Impressionism and Fauvism pertaining to the invention of new painting techniques and brand-new utilisation of colour and shapes to improve delivering of messages, sentiments, experiences and emotions.^{[11] [12]} Hence, the evolution of Minimalist Art is about art itself, with the reduction of excessive representations, compositions and expressions.^[13] Generally speaking, the most crucial characteristic of this style is its ultimate simplicity, impartial and neutral approach.^[14] For example, an artist will normally use a restricted quantity of colours and couple with a simplified subject matter in the construction of the artwork.^[15] Artists revolves around the idea of simplicity and plainness in their creations and this movement which proliferated has been a great source of inspiration for other artists in the next decades.^[16]

Minimalist Art is regarded as extending the conceptual idea that art should embody its unique reality, and not to be treated as a copy or reproduction of another notion.^[17] In the traditional world of arts, art is being thought of as symbolic of the reality, and to represent an experience, convey a message and emotion.^[18] However, with Minimalist Art, the purpose is not to illustrate an external reality, its central aim is to stimulate the viewer to digest and respond to what is presented before the eyes.^[19] Therefore, in other words, the medium and subject matter for which it is constructed, the work itself is the reality.^[20] Similarly, the establishment of minimalism is closely related to conceptual art which also thrived in the 1960s.^{[21] [22]} Both forms of art confront the prevailing structures of making, dispersing and perceiving art.^[23] Into the margin, they argued that the dominance assigned to the art is misplaced and results in a strict and privileged art which could only be enjoyed by the minority.^[24]

Minimalism as an art movement first originated in the 1950s, it is also known as Reductive Art, ABC Art and Minimalist Art.^[25] Aesthetically, in comparison, Minimalist Art brings forth a largely purified type of beauty and taste.^[26] On that account, it can be concluded that Minimalist Art represents truth, order, control, clarity and balance.^[27] This movement eliminates its objects to the littlest amount of colours, shapes, and textures in order to establish a needed effect.^[28] Lessening colour, lines and form to a minimum amount in its composition is the main goal of minimalist artists.^[29] The most important characteristics of this art movement include simplicity, where no excessive subject matters are utilised, repetitions is also another critical feature whereby artists employ repetitive colours and lines in the artworks, geometric shapes such as rectangles, circles, squares are often employed in the painting to convey a sense of simpleness and coherence, lastly, very little materials are used in the creation and symbolisations are kept away.^[30] For example, black-and-white images are a representation of the minimalist style, as the colour is being reduced to minimum as part of distractions.^[31] With reference to the definition, simplicity is the most significant particularity in the artworks that belonged to this movement, where little use of lines and shapes is employed in the process of its composition.^[32] Although minimalism as a concept in arts can be dated back to the 1900s and in today’s world of arts, influences of minimalism can still be seen in diverse fields of art such as photography, design, sculpture and architecture.^[33]

 

Minimalist photography focuses on simplicity and its artistic style can be encapsulated in the quote: less is more.^[34] Minimalist photographers achieve this effect by casting aside all the unnecessary components in creating their works.^[35] This important principle is demonstrated in various minimalist photographs, for example, when capturing a mountain or an ocean on camera, the entirety of the scenery will be presented as one big vast space.^[36] Therefore, the vacantness and bareness of the space shown enables the audience to imagine and craft their own version of interpretation and comprehension, instead of including the photographer’s own inputs and insights.^[37] In order to expand and concentrate on the expansive space, it is crucial to minimise contradicting elements such as people or distractive buildings, in order to convey a sense of barrenness and desolation that creates a theatrical atmosphere and visual experience.^[38] Therefore, minimalist photograph is often captured at early morning, sunrise or dark at night. This is to ensure the scene would not be filled with crowds and that the overall composition would appear neat and simplified.

 

Minimalist photography often pays attention to one single subject in its composition, using nature as its background.^[39] Some representative subject matters include geometric patterns, lines and textures, which can range from an apple, a mountain or a bridge.^[40] Although this style of photography is derived from the art movement in the early 1950s, its huge impact is exhibited in various forms of digital photography.^[41]

Minimalist photography depends laboriously on symbolism.^[42] For example, the photograph could be symbolic of a plant emerging out from a small crack in the pavement of a busy city, it could also be a simple subject matter such as a pen, fruit and lines.^[43]

Secondly, juxtaposition is also a major component in minimalist photography.^[44] This could be the presentation of two entirely opposing notions that happen to appear in one single photograph.^[45] For instance, the juxtaposition could be evident in the image where there is a clear distinction between the natural and what is man made.

 

Thirdly, minimalist photography also relies largely on a clear contrast in the colours, it might call for post processing and editing after the photo is taken, in order to create a more obvious and stark contrast.^[46] To elaborate this, unwanted colours or shades can be reduced or taken away by using photo editing software, where saturation of the photograph can be altered according to preferences.^[47] Moreover, minimalist photography is not limited to colours, as monochrome photography or greyscale photograph are effective in conveying the minimalist approach.^[48] In addition, simple patterns, shapes or colour combinations are often utilised in the minimalist style as well.

Fourthly, a clean, simple yet infinite background is a central feature to minimalist photography.^[49] This is due to that minimalist photographers wish to create a simplified visual story and experience for the viewer, therefore, it is important and common to start with a pure and spotless canvas, including a clean wall, paper or other backdrops.^[50] Furthermore, photographers usually employ objects in the natural world as backgrounds, such as lakes, oceans, skies, deserts, mountains to be the perfect canvas.^[51] To illustrate this critical principle, Photoshop and other editing softwares are used in order to remove undesired shades or objects in the photograph, such as crowds, cars, trees, architectures, buildings etc.^[52]

Fifthly, a good and suitable composition is unarguably significant in the world of minimalist photography.^[53] For instance, traditional rules such as the golden ratio and rule of thirds are only taken into consideration to a small extent when taking such photographs.^[54] Similarly, editing softwares are widely used to eliminate other distractions to present a clean composition. Therefore, as the subject matter is kept to minimal, composition is used to display context.

Last but not least, negative spaces are extremely considered in the composition of minimalist photography to create such compositions.^[55] To explain, negative space is exclusively important when creating a composition and in the process of supplying appropriate context, as it exhibits perspective, location, message and scale of the subject matter in the photograph.^[56] This is effective especially when negative space is utilised to convey a sense of isolation, dissection and solitude.^[57] Therefore, although the minimalist photography can be categorised into a genre of its own, minimalist photography incorporates other various genre of photography as well, such as monochrome, landscape, portrait.

 

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