Some thoughts about photography

Life is full of duality. In order to understand a thing, step one should be to find two opposing approaches to the thing. Now, a big part of my personal credo is the belief that nothing is truly black and white. Regardless, before you start identifying shades of gray, you need to identify what is black, and what is white.

When the cameras became a proven technology, they instantly replaced a large segment of the art world. Our modern perception of the art world leans towards the deification of painters. Painting was a requirement. Without electricity or modern construction capability, homes needed illumination through painting. This is, of course, mostly limited to the wealthy elite, but the idea applies to public art and religious art as well. Painting was a functional requirement of life, on par with bookkeeping. Society was capably of illuminating public spaces, and maintaining a visual record of the cultural elite. Painting also functioned to advertise and publicize more mundane subjects - the medieval equivalent of advertising and newspapers. The invention of the camera made much of this obsolete. 

Photography is brutally honest. For a thousand years or more, humanity had wished for this technology, but seeing the true representation of life framed on the wall was understandably overwhelming in ways. Preserving a moment in time forces everyone to engage with the actual, non-revised version of the past. Every imperfection is there for the ages to behold and judge. It is wonderful to capture beauty, but it is far easier to find sad truth. The world is not a glorious vivid painting. Kings atop horses spend a significant amount of time walking through mud.

Despite the almost horrific truth that the camera can produce, there emerges a new form of expression. The camera captures what your eye is actually seeing, but is that the truth of life? There is value in capturing the emotion of a moment, and not shining the spotlight on the cynical imperfections. Cynicism is largely useless. Unless you are literally reporting the news, there is little to be gained by always finding the