EXIT #14 Abstraction analyses all sides of abstraction in photographic production, from the first avant-garde experiments to the latest in digital developments. In the opening editorial, The Enigma of Abstraction, Rosa Olivares sets out the approach explored throughout this issue.

In her text, Abstracting Thoughts from Abstraction, Dore Ashton links a series of theses and ideas from literature, poetry and painting into abstract photography, with examples taken fromAlfred Stiegtlitz and László Moholy-Nagy.

With more systematic zeal, the German artist and professor Gottfried Jägger, in his essay Abstract photography, explores the core of the abstract in photography, addressing the difference between the abstraction of the photograph and the abstraction of the objects that are in the photograph. From this premise and the evolution of the abstract in photography, of the creation of non-representative images, Jägger sets out his revealing typology of abstract photography.

The artist who is central in this issue is British photographer Adam Fuss. The interview carried out by Mercedes Vicente talks us through a career marked by different approaches to the abstract image, from the primitive technique of the photogram to the simple yet effective methods used in making his well known spirals of colour and images of smoke. But the works of this Londoner also comprise solid figurative images – birds, dresses, babies, snakes, worms – opening up the debate of figurative-abstraction, delving into a more symbolic and conceptual essence of what we understand when referring to abstract.

The portfolios of the German artists Wolfgang Tillmans, Jörg Sasse, Jason Salavon and the Spanish Darío Urzay offer a good representation of the diverse paths of abstraction in current photography.

Furthermore, throughout the pages of the aforementioned articles, are images from a variety of artists, completing this issue of EXIT, including:  Lidia Benavides, Rudolf Bonvie, Daniel Canogar, Rufo Criado, Wim Delvoye, João Paulo Feliciano, Roland Fischer, Christopher Giglio, Alex Haas, Heinrich Heidersberger, Gottfried Jäger, Barbara Kasten, Peter Keetman, Jonathan Lewis, René Mächler, Richard Misrach, László Moholy-Nagy, Rafael Navarro, José Luís Neto, Concha Prada, Susan Rankaitis, Thomas Ruff, Ricardo B. Sánchez, Sean Scully, Andres Serrano, Alfred Stieglitz, Frank Thiel, Milagros de la Torre, Juan Uslé, Ian Wallace and James Welling.