The general public often equates modern painting with abstraction. The fact is, it is much more then that, nevertheless, this understanding is not completely incorrect. The well-known New York art critic of the 1950s, Clement Greenberg, argued that the essential, unique and exclusive element of modern painting is its flatness. Aside from the literal flatness of the canvas itself, Greenberg focused on depicted flatness, where the artist balances form, colour and line to create a painting that appears flat or flattened out. He saw modern painting as depicting a new, more abstract reality. He was also noted for his promotion of the New York school of abstract expressionism, with the likes of such artists as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning.

Greenberg was actually codifying what perceptive artists had been observing ever since the late 19th century. As early as 1890, Maurice Denis stated that; "a picture – before being a war horse, a female nude or some anecdote – is essentially a flat surface covered with colours assembled in a particular order".

Prior that that date, other artists, such as Cézanne saw in Impressionism a certain formlessness and what he thought of as a shift away from reality. Perhaps intuitively, his paintings show a consciousness of the flat surface of the picture plane, in that his forms seem parallel, rather than at right angles to it. Instead of depicting the reality of nature, his is a separate, more artificial, abstract reality; the reality of the painting itself.

Cézanne, in correspondence with Emile Bernard, advised that nature should be seen in terms of its basic forms, the sphere, cone and cylinder. This was one of the underlying influences that motivated Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso to develop Cubism as a flattened, abstract reality.

In 1920, the Realistic Manifesto which was authored and signed by the Russian artists, Naum Gabo and Anton Pevsner, made deliberate use of "realistic" to underscore their conviction that what they were doing in their abstract paintings and constructions constituted a new reality of ideas or forms more absolute than any imitation of nature.

As late as the 1950s when I was an undergraduate art student, the emphasis was still on such concepts as the integrity of the picture plane, but also on the honest use of materials, so these concepts have, for me, a certain ring of familiarity.

At the same time, I was, even then, aware of certain tensions between this new reality and the reality as depicted in photography.

Ever since the mid-19th century and the invention of the Daguerrotype in 1839, photography was a underlying technology, that impacted painting, yet was thought of as something other than art.

Space does not permit the detailed history and development of photography as an acknowledged and recognised art form. Suffice it to say that photography is now recognised as such. The question is, just how does it fit in with these varying theories of modernism? There are at least two Bermudian photographers who have given consideration to concepts of abstraction in photography. Graeme Outerbridge is one such artist.

His architectural-cum-abstract photographs utilise a layering of architectural planes that run parallel to the picture plane much as in Cézanne's late paintings.

His first book, 'Bermuda Abstracts', published in 1981 by Matrix Publishers in Rhode Island, is illustrated with examples of his approach to abstraction in photography

The other Bermudian photographer is Ian MacDonald-Smith, who, currently, is exhibiting six large photographic abstracts on canvas in the Onions Gallery of the Bermuda Society of Arts. These six are in his on-going series on water reflections.

Unlike Graeme Outerbridge's use of overlapping planes, a la Cézanne, Ian MacDonald-Smith's compositions are closer to the overall configurations of Jackson Pollock, with their web of tangled lines that spread and cover the composition.

Actually his subject, water reflections, reduces what is being reflected to the flattened, undulating surface of the water, thus flattening and fragmenting the subject into a multitude of facets.

The flattening process is, to a certain extent, already worked out by nature itself. MacDonald-Smith, having perceptive eyes and extensive background knowledge on the theoretical underpinnings of modernism, sees and photographs what most would over-look.

From Ian MacDonald-Smith's various titles, it seems that he looks for his reflections in European city harbour situations. I recall his earlier use of reflections and as I remember, these were from a small inner harbour in Bergen, Norway.

His more recent creations are from such places as Amsterdam, Meersburg, Bruges and Cochem.

Perhaps because of MacDonald-Smith's photographs of reflections, I have also become more aware of reflections and it seems to me that, in these harbour situations, there is often a light layer of oil on the surface which actually seems to aid the creation of unique reflections. There is a certain smoothness to the surface, that that comes only with the oiliness.

I understand that Ian MacDonald-Smith has been photographing water reflections for at least 22 to 23 years. He is therefore a specialist on the subject with knowledge of how varying conditions impact the creation of reflections.

You may have heard this definition of a specialist: someone who knows more and more about less and less. Mr. MacDonald-Smith seems to know a lot about this very restricted subject, but at the same time, he has been able to link it with a broader knowledge of art in general.

The Ian MacDonald-Smith exhibition was supposed to have ended on May 12. Instead, it has been held over until June 8. There is still time to see this important show.