Every ships hull tells a story, a painted one, that reveals a narrative in the abstract. Seaman and artist Klaus Lange focuses his camera on this wonderful narrative. The ships sea-worn hull, like a painted canvas, is the product of much life spent, much time passed, and much potential beauty found in the interim. It is a most poetic container of time and record that Lange’s camera brings into focus. His photographic images find the sublime in physical struggle and natural beauty. In such a way, his work references modernist abstraction. Yet, his work is a photographic representation of paint -- optically not unlike a Jules Olitski or Clifford Still painting. Lange’s work delicately transforms ships water-worn, sea-affected finish, into a heroic skin of painted abstraction. In essence, he finds and highlights intriguing moments of abstraction at sea. In this way his work is quite traditional, yet Lange’s unique subject matter, photographed paint, makes his work quite radical as well. Lange’s photographs are a simultaneous indulgence in, and criticism of, painterly expression. It is a rethinking of painting and photography as visual mechanics. He offers a new way to see abstract painting, and simultaneously, a new way to see photography. Lange puts forth a new type of painting meta-narrative, the story of nature diminishing materiality, told through abstract photography. Quite amazing are the inventive and seemingly purposeful forms that the sea has worn onto certain ships. Lange’s abstraction is a thoughtful look at these stunning formations. Once mounted onto canvas, the photographic element of Lange’s work becomes less apparent. What initially appears to be a painting, upon second look is seen as a photographic print. The mounting and presentation of these photographs is a poignant commentary on painting, whereby the ships sea-worn story is told like that of an abstract expressionists.