Thou Art the King of Glory

It’s a funny poem, plainly veiled in surface, words dulled illuminate the light of the time frozen. Crafting light into life.

A photograph is a unique piece of art; art in that it constructs further clarity in the reexamination of reality, and unique in that it creates nothing but mere copies of tones on a shiny paper. The art by nature is second-hand but, by design, artfully creates in the mind a novelty of perception. Such perception is the drawing, light from the real is the instrument and form.

A photo captures objects, yes, but it also creates story and narrative from the way things collect together and unite into infinite wholes, infinitely novel and terribly unrepeatable. It’s funny how light reflects the life of a moment, the many matters being, the beings moving and breathing and living. One can almost feel the light on the paper skin of the child in the grass or the chill movement of the wind in the shadows of her hair as it covers her face. A frozen collection of visuals in a micro-movement of time emulates the idea of a life trajectory and origin too possible to ignore yet too unknown to define. All one can truly know is the moment, and yet its beauty is complete.

I think photography works to reconstruct perception by way of simplification, not in the sense of dulling or overstating the obvious but by focusing the mind and bringing it into the clarity and rest of a single box of things, a measure small enough for the mind to wrap around. One may even understand photos in the sole language of light, as merely various tones on a paper, or even simply lights and shadows. Yet what is perceived is much greater yet made better by the simplicity of the form.

What do you think?