The recent article published by My Modern Met introduces Bill Armstrong and his career-defining turn in 1997, when a single out-of-focus photograph convinced him to abandon traditional “straight photography.” Over more than 25 years, Armstrong has refined a radical approach - photographing found collages with his lens set to infinity, producing blurred, dreamlike abstractions rather than literal, detailed representations.
The article emphasizes how Armstrong sees blur not as a flaw, but as a powerful expressive tool: by removing sharpness, he invites viewers to engage emotionally, psychologically, and intuitively - to respond to mood and atmosphere rather than recognizable forms. It presents his work as an ongoing investigation into perception, memory and abstraction, where color, form, and ambiguity combine to ask deeper questions about how we see and interpret images.
