Why do we like what we like?

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>I will close with this observation: I wish that Kant had lived long enough to meet Barthes.</p>

<p>I would like to know, that is, what Kant would have said about Barthes' idea of the <em>punctum. </em>Would Kant have claimed that there is no possible perception that is not "filtered" by or through an underlying conceptual <em>qua</em> cultural framework? I wonder what Barthe's response might have been to a Kantian challenge--and I am pretty sure that Kant would have offered a stern challenge.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Supriyo]

<p>Speaking of Barthes' punctum, this one hits me like an arrow: <a href="/photo/11541091">http://www.photo.net/photo/11541091</a></p>

<p>This one is from Barry Fisher's folder, it relates to some shackled expression, some stifled voice waiting to burst out of the shut lips, I connect to it immediately. Moreover, the beautiful light highlighting the sculpted body, and the man's sideways glance work together to make this a winner for me.</p>

[Julie H]

<blockquote>

<p>"a work or art in general is best approached with as much a blank state of mind as possible"</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I don't agree with that at all. Some art requires quiet; some art thrives in noise; some goes with the flow and wants you in your full-own chattery noisy persona on arrival. There is endless variety -- there are collective becomings; there are projections; and there are works that make a private, quiet living space [location, containment, surroundings] for the spectator, intending no further guidance at all.</p>

<p>Signifiers-signified have more than one meaning. They can and almost always do have conflicting meanings for <em>the same person at the same time</em>. The degree to which one prevails over (but does not silence) the many other contrasting, conflicting and directly opposing perceived meanings is infinitely varied and infinitely individual (per both who and when he/she is looking).</p>

<p>Take erections, for example ...</p>

[Supriyo]

Julie,

I will leave it to Phil to explain this his way. At least In my interpretation of the statement, a blank state of mind does not necessarily equate to a calm serine mind. There are always going to be thoughts and ideas, but the desired state of mind (IMO) is one where a single idea or belief does not get precedence over others and overpowers my judgement. Many thoughts and ideas should get equal weights in my

mind and together they will constitute the white background. Blank = white as in white noise. Your second paragraph, if I understood correctly, is in line with my description.

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>This was shot earlier this evening with a little hand-held Sony A6000. I liked the actual view better than I like <a href="/photo/18252400&size=lg"><em>the photo</em></a>--but that happens so often with outdoor shots.</p>

<p>I like to feel the wind on my face, and I don't like that I cannot feel what I felt when I saw this scene not even two hours ago.</p>

<p><a href="/photo/18252406&size=lg"><strong>HERE</strong></a> is another view, shot a few minutes later from roadside where I pulled over to get these shots.</p>

<p>I actually like wholesome pictures of fresh things like rainbows. I wonder what on earth is wrong with my aesthetic sense. Am I warped, or perhaps just not very artistic or imaginative?</p>

<p>--Lannie</p><div></div>

[spanky]

<p>Thanks for the comments on my photo Lannie. I'm surprised anyone still looks at these photos, they have been there for eons and I've just been too lazy to update it. This picture was taken in Union Station in LA. I used to do as lot of shooting in there up until recently when they roped off the waiting area for people with train tickets only. Little by little thought I'm starting to shoot there again and so far no problems. I do like your use of the term intimacy. It's nothing that I set out to do, I don't have any rhyme or reason when I'm out shooting, I just shoot on instinct. I do like for my street photos to describe some sort of thought or emotion on the people in them however vague and impossible to predict. </p>

[Julie H]

<p>Random addition:</p>

<p>I was scolded, yesterday, in the Picture of the Week forum, for not appreciating 'fun.' It reminded me of a passage in (sculptor, painter) Anne Truitt's diary/book where she writes:<br>

.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>For one whole day I entertained the notion, which had been creeping up on me, of turning my back on the live nerve of myself and <em>having fun</em>.</p>

<p>This morning I am sober. I would be a fool to sacrifice joy for fun.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>.</p>

<p>While doing my morning busy-work, I've been parsing the difference between <em>fun</em> and <em>joy</em> in what makes me 'like' a picture. A lot of the photos I like are not fun — not <em>at all</em> fun — but I find joy in looking at them. To joy, I'd add 'satisfaction.' [i do notice that I'm sounding sanctimonious and I will add that, Laura, the PoW poster's heart was in the right place, even if I disagree with everything she wrote.]</p>

 

[thomas_k.]

<blockquote>

<p>Why do we like what we like?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Psychoanalysis anybody? <br>

I leave the subconscious and unspoken when they are. Maybe this is what I like about visual arts - things can be left outside of words.</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>Here is one that I really like. Again, as is so often the case, I cannot say exactly what it is that makes me like it so much.</p>

<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/laphotocurator/photos/a.1621646194743877.1073741828.1563174750591022/1746846198890542/?type=3&theater">[LINK]</a></p>

<p>Here is another:</p>

<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/laphotocurator/photos/a.1621646194743877.1073741828.1563174750591022/1739830026258826/?type=3&theater">[LINK]</a></p>

<p>Bill Eggleston, eat your heart out!</p>

<p>Here is yet another compelling one:</p>

<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/laphotocurator/photos/a.1621646194743877.1073741828.1563174750591022/1721027914805704/?type=3&theater">[LINK]</a></p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Supriyo]

<blockquote>

<p>Here is one that I really like. Again, as is so often the case, I cannot say exactly what it is that makes me like it so much.</p>

</blockquote>

<p> <br>

I think it would be arrogant to claim I can definitively explain what I like in these two photos, but I can put forward some keywords to describe my mood.</p>

<p>Photo 1: Intimacy, tenderness, past memory (recall Steve J Murray), unfolding of a story</p>

<p>Photo 2: One word - contradiction (and associated uneasiness)</p>

<p>For photo 2, I strongly feel my own beliefs and mental inclinations play a major role in imparting my mood. While Gun rights advocates may not find this as a contradiction between tender childhood and violence of firearms, others may find this just funny and light hearted. However all of them including me will probably find it a compelling image, not sure if 'liking' is the word to be associated with that compulsion.</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>Not bad, Supriyo, not bad!<br>

<br />--Lannie</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<blockquote>

<p>A viewer could find all kinds of meanings in your picture, given the rich symbology of rainbows in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_in_mythology" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">myth</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_in_culture" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">culture</a>.<br /> That costume store in <a href="http://illuminatimovies.net/wp-content/uploads/illuminati-movies-eyes-wide-shut-rainbow.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Eyes Wide Shut</a> was no coincidence...</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Gosh, Phil, the ambience of that old farm just didn't evoke images of <em>Eyes Wide Shut.</em></p>

<blockquote>

<p>I actually like wholesome pictures of fresh things like rainbows.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I never said, of course, that I always like wholesome and only wholesome images--unless there is a category of nudes called "wholesome nudes." (There actually might be--Jim Phelps' "<a href="/photodb/folder?folder_id=894886">Rebecca photos</a>" come to mind.)</p>

<p>--Lannie</p><div></div>

[Norma Desmond]

<blockquote>

<p>I like to feel the wind on my face, and I don't like that I cannot feel what I felt when I saw this scene not even two hours ago.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Generally speaking (with exceptions, of course), my photos don't make me feel what I felt when I was taking them. As one example, when I took <a href="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/16071752-lg.jpg">THIS PHOTO</a> of Andy, we were both feeling a little chilly because the beach was windier and foggier than we'd expected. It wasn't the scene or the elements or the beach or the ocean that was the cause of my feelings, though they were contributing their part, it was my excitement at composing and creating this picture. It was the idea in my head and that idea being translated to a photo. When I look at the picture, I don't think about that day or how I felt on that day. What I like about it is that it makes me feel something else.<br>

<br>

I think a lot of photos I appreciate work that way as well. They don't seem so much tied to the photographer's feelings about the subject as much as they are tied to a passion for making a picture. I doubt Eggleston, for example, was trying to create the feelings he had when looking at that red ceiling. I think he was seeing that red ceiling in a very special way and intent on turning it into a photo. It was the making of the photo that I perceive to have been exciting him.</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<blockquote>

<p>When I look at the picture, I don't think about that day or how I felt on that day. What I like about it is that it makes me feel something else.</p>

<p>I think a lot of photos I appreciate work that way as well. They don't seem so much tied to the photographer's feelings about the subject as much as they are tied to a passion for making a picture.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>I can certainly relate to what you are saying, Fred, and I can say the same thing with regard to much of my photography. When I go chasing thunderstorms, on the other hand, the activity of being "out there" is primary--much as climbing mountains is about, well, climbing mountains. I do want to capture something "out there" which transcends my personal feelings, of course, and that "something" is indeed the photo; but there is also a sense in which taking the picture can be part of an expressive function of how I feel in nature. The result of that expressive function is often linked to some kind of transformative experience, emotionally or spiritually speaking. I would simply call it a kind of "replenishment." Others may get it through exercise, yoga, music, religious ceremony, etc. I am not into religious ritual, and so for me I avoid group activities and instead seek solitude and nature as part of a quest to get back to who I authentically am. I tend to leave urban concentrations when I am seeking these replenishing experiences. Getting away from people is a big part of it for me. Most religious people I know seem to want to congregate. That is pretty foreign to what I am talking about. </p>

<p>How this got mixed up with photography for me is puzzling, but both have this in common: much of my photography is like my wilderness wanderings in that both are escapes. The link to photography probably started from carrying a little Instamatic in my coat pocket when I first started going off trail and into wild places on my own back in the mid-sixties. Needless to say, what I captured did not bring back images that either looked like what I saw or what I felt.</p>

<p>I don't really know how much of my photography is like this, but enough is that I want the photo to help me remember not only how it looked but also how it felt.</p>

<p>Seeking souvenirs? That is part of it, I suppose, but putting it that way trivializes it for me and would not express just how important my nature-seeking really is for me. If I forget the camera, I can still have the experience. I go back out again as mountaineers go out again, as one said, "because the mountaineer remembers that he has forgotten so much." That special emotional or spiritual experience cannot really be captured, of course, and so there is always a sense of futility in trying to recapture those special moments by looking at the photos later. <em> One must go out again. </em> Since there is beauty there for the eyes, I carry a camera of some sort most of the time.</p>

<p>Since real wilderness almost does not exist in the East anymore, I have to try to find that special feeling in nature where I can. For some reason, I gain a sense of replenishment from nature by feeling the wind from thunderstorms--and sometimes in other very ordinary settings. It is about experiencing a certain kind of tactile beauty, not to deny the visual aspect, but to emphasize that it is more than what the eyes (or the camera) can capture.</p>

<p>Perhaps what I am describing is simply the practice (or experience or expression) of a kind of mysticism that somehow got mixed up with photography.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<blockquote>

<p>How this got mixed up with photography for me is puzzling, but both have this in common: much of my photography is like my wilderness wanderings in that both are escapes. --LK</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>Even more puzzling is how this got mixed up with my appreciation of certain nudes. Nudity can be a distraction, but there is a kind of nude that makes me feel more serene, tranquil. I would say that perhaps one or two of the shots in the folder by Jim Phelps are in this category. The others tend to be more distracting, even titillating. That is pretty foreign to what I am seeking when I am in my nature-seeking mode. In that mode the nudity is "no big deal." In other contexts, nudity can indeed be a very big deal--sometimes too big a deal to associate with spiritual or emotional replenishment.</p>

<p>Spirituality in the viewing of the nude? Perhaps that is stretching it, even in those few nude photos that are tranquilizing, but somehow even in the viewing of the nude there can be a kind of attempt to transcend the ordinary, the banal, the soul-killing aspect of "civilization."</p>

<p>I cannot even explain "it" to myself, but the fact that it is real for me is obvious enough--and is part of my pain upon having someone else tell me what viewing the nude is and must be about. Some (quite a few, I imagine) may see all nudes as porn. Others might try to factor out the beauty from the titillating side. (I see John Peri as being in that mode--some of the time.) Some simply say that viewing nudes is always about sex. That might be, but sex can be sublime and transcendent--or not. I really do not know where sex is in my consciousness when I am in the viewing mode that I am describing. I think that it has to do with beauty, but beauty and sexuality have long been seen to be related.</p>

<p>Viewing the nude can, in any case, be a transcendent experience in some sense--not to say that it often is. I wish that I understood all this myself.</p>

<p>is it about some quest for lost innocence? I suppose that one could come up with all kinds of psychological explanations. I would probably give the thumbs down to most attempts to explain it. I will say that sometimes it is like sitting on a high cliff and having a cool or cold wind blow upon my face, as unlikely as that sounds (in the extreme). It is transcendent, whatever else it may be, and it is not at all impure (speaking subjectively). It is also comparatively quite rare for me. It is yet special and worth seeking, I think, almost like seeing that special light on one's favorite mountain or other subject. </p>

<p>Almost. . .</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>One of the quotes I used above is in all this, which I found in summitpost.org. It is in boldface below as it was actually written by Geoffrey Winthrop Young:</p>

 

<blockquote>

<h2>Why They Did It (Notable Quotes)</h2>

<p>The Forum thread "<a href="http://www.summitpost.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=23084&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0">Climbing/Mountaineering Quotes</a>" has included some beautiful expressions of why people climb mountains. Below is a sampling of this rich treasure (listed in the order they appeared and with the first person to post that quote acknowledged as the contributor):<br /><br /><em>"Hours slide by like minutes. The accumulated clutter of day-to-day existence – the lapses of conscience, the unpaid bills, the bungled opportunities, the dust under the couch, the inescapable prison of your genes – all of it is temporarily forgotten, crowded from your thoughts by an overpowering clarity of purpose by the seriousness of the task at hand."</em> --<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krakauer%2C_jon">Jon Krakauer</a> (contributed by <a href="http://www.summitpost.org/user_page.php?user_id=16437">Haliku</a>)<br /><br /><em>"The mountains are calling and I must go."</em> --<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Muir">John Muir</a> (contributed by <a href="http://www.summitpost.org/user_page.php?user_id=26307">Mark Doiron</a>)<br /><br /><strong><em>"The mountaineer returns to the hills because he remembers always that he has forgotten so much."</em> --<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Winthrop_Young">Geoffrey Winthrop Young</a> </strong>(contributed by <a href="http://www.summitpost.org/user_page.php?user_id=26307">Mark Doiron</a>)<br /><br /><em>"Although civilization is a nice place to visit, I wouldn't want to live there ..."</em> --<a href="http://www.toothoftimetraders.com/philmont/product.asp?s_id=0&prod_name=Tobasco+Donkeys%2C+Sawin%27+on+the+Strings&pf_id=PAAAAADINOIBCCGJ&dept_id=3100">Tobasco Donkeys</a>, "I Don't Mind" Lyric (contributed by <a href="http://www.summitpost.org/user_page.php?user_id=17097">jomal</a>)<br /><br /><em>"Nobody climbs mountains for scientific reasons. Science is used to raise money for the expeditions, but you really climb for the hell of it."</em> --<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Edmund_Hillary">Sir Edmund Hillary</a> (contributed by <a href="http://www.summitpost.org/user_page.php?user_id=26235">Mountain Girl BC</a>)<br /><br /><em>"You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Because what is below does not know what is above, but what is above knows what is below. One climbs, one sees. one descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know."</em> --<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rene_Daumal">Rene Daumal</a> (contributed by <a href="http://www.summitpost.org/user_page.php?user_id=31296">supermarmot</a>)<br /><br /><em>"Eventually, I sickened of people, myself included, who don't think enough of themselves to make something of themselves--people who did only what they had to and never what they could have done. I learned from them the infected loneliness that comes at the end of every misspent day. I knew I could do better."</em> --<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Twight">Mark Twight</a> (contributed by <a href="http://www.summitpost.org/user_page.php?user_id=30914">GravityPilot</a>)<br /><br /><em>"Better to be in the mountains thinking about God, than to be in church thinking about the mountains!"</em> --<a href="http://acekvale.com/about.htm">Ace Kvale</a> (contributed by <a href="http://www.summitpost.org/user_page.php?user_id=31599">Hulio</a>)<br /><br /><em>"Men go back to the mountains, as they go back to sailing ships at sea, because in the mountains and on the sea they must face up, as did men of another age, to the challenge of nature. Modern man lives in a highly synthetic kind of existence. He specializes in this and that. Rarely does he test all his powers or find himself whole. But in the hills and on the water the character of a man comes out."</em> --Abram T. Collier (contributed by <a href="http://www.summitpost.org/user_page.php?user_id=9984">SJD</a>)<br /><br /><em>"I have not tired of the wilderness; rather I enjoy its beauty and the vagrant life I lead, more keenly all the time. I prefer the saddle to the streetcar, and star-sprinkled sky to a roof, the obscure and difficult trail to any paved highway, and the deep peace of the wild to the discontent bred by cities."</em> --<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everett_Ruess">Everett Ruess</a> (contributed by <a href="http://www.summitpost.org/user_page.php?user_id=33084">mtnpainter</a>)<br /><br /> Here are some other notable quotes that have been submitted to this album:<br /><br /><em>"To those who have struggled with them, the mountains reveal beauties that they will not disclose to those who make no effort. That is the reward the mountains give to effort. And it is because they have so much to give and give it so lavishly to those who will wrestle with them that men love the mountains and go back to them again and again. The mountains reserve their choice gifts for those who stand upon their summits."</em> --<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Younghusband">Sir Francis Younghusband</a> (contributed by <a href="http://www.summitpost.org/user_page.php?user_id=25744">gimpilator</a>)<br /><br /><em>"If the conquest of a great peak brings moments of exultation and bliss, which in the monotonous, materialistic existence of modern times nothing else can approach, it also presents great dangers. It is not the goal of "grand alpinisme" to face peril, but it is one of the tests one must undergo to deserve the joy of rising for an instant above the state of crawling grubs."</em> --<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lionel_Terray">Lionel Terray</a> (contributed by <a href="http://www.summitpost.org/user_page.php?user_id=25744">gimpilator</a>)<br /><br /><em>"Climbing mattered. The danger bathed the world in a halogen glow that caused everything - the sweep of the rock, the orange and yellow lichens, the texture of the clouds - to stand out in brilliant relief. Life thrummed at a higher pitch. The world was made real."</em> --<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krakauer%2C_jon">Jon Krakauer</a> (contributed by <a href="http://www.summitpost.org/user_page.php?user_id=25744">gimpilator</a>)<br /><br /><em>"Because it is there."</em> --<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mallory">George Herbert Leigh Mallory</a> (contributed by <a href="http://www.summitpost.org/user_page.php?user_id=25529">Dalton1</a>)</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>Some may see the above post as off-topic, since it is not about photography <em>per se.</em></p>

<p>To that narrow viewpoint I can only say that the larger philosophical context which is often invoked when one once starts talking about aesthetics can have much to offer. We do well to avoid declaring prematurely what is off-topic or irrelevant, in my opinion--especially where philosophy of anything is concerned. Insights can blindside one from nowhere in the theoretical realm.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>I just noticed this quote from the mass of quotes above:</p>

<blockquote>

<p><em>"You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Because what is below does not know what is above, but what is above knows what is below. One climbs, one sees. one descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know."</em> --<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rene_Daumal" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Rene Daumal</a></p>

</blockquote>

<p>Maybe the above captures a bit of why I like what I like.</p>

<p>Here is another example of what I like, this one by Glenn McCreery:</p>

<p><a href="/photo/18219919&size=lg">[LINK]</a></p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>A couple of things strike me at the moment. </p>

<p>The "souvenir" type photo tends to be more literal. Other photos are less so. In art, I tend toward the less literal.</p>

<p>There are at least two ways to approach this notion of why I "like." One is what the picture has to offer. One is the psychology of the viewer. I tend to focus on the picture.</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<blockquote>

<p>There are at least two ways to approach this notion of why I "like." One is what the picture has to offer. One is the psychology of the viewer. I tend to focus on the picture.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>Very well, Fred, but the two approaches are hardly mutually exclusive, nor would the ascendancy of one approach for a given photo necessarily imply the superiority of that approach for all photos.</p>

<p>I tend to be skeptical that anything objective inhering in the photo has more explanatory value than the subjective values and mental states of viewers.</p>

<p>On your view, even beauty itself might be seen to be objective. The eye of the beholder be damned.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>I wasn't talking about objectivity and subjectivity. I was talking about looking at photos. You are definitely right that looking at photos and discussing the photos themselves and looking inward are not mutually exclusive. It's only you who have done only the latter here. You have once again used this thread to throw up (in both the sense of linking to and in the sense of vomiting) a bunch of examples and follow them with the statement that you can't say why you like them.</p>

<p>We're talking about photos, presumably. Our subjective responses are very important, as you are well aware. But they are important relative to the photos, not in and of themselves. There is a photo before us and our personal feelings can certainly be ignited by those photos. But, I maintain that if we don't address what, in the photos, is causing that ignition, we've missed an important part of the story. </p>

<p>You continually wonder why your photos don't express your feelings. You've said it again here. Now I know you're going to default to see this as ad hominem on my part because I dare to pick up on the many doors you, yourself, open by talking about yourself so much. Hey, I do it, too. But then I don't mind when people address me as a person and make personal observations about my photos or my comments here. I don't accuse them of playing the ad hominem card because I know they know how important who I am is to how I photograph and any discussion that involves someone expressing their own inability to express something they feel in their own photos kind of demands dealing with issues of who that person is and how their thinking may be affecting their photos. Looking within and looking at your feelings will not help you with expressing your feelings in your photos. You've got to look at the photos as well, both yours and others. Your inability to talk about that side of the equation, as I've stated before, is directly related to your inability to express your feelings in your photos. It's about articulation. It's about being able to output what's inside. And it's not necessarily about doing that only in a literal manner.</p>

<p>Now, you've also said that you just do photography to escape. So there's your out. But that doesn't quite gel with your declared inability to express what you feel in your photos, which seems to suggest there's more to it than merely escaping.</p>

<p>You've repeated many times how analysis may be counterproductive and yet you've expended more words analyzing here than anyone else. I just think you might consider that you're analyzing the wrong things, or at least not analyzing all you could be analyzing . . . hint . . . photos.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<blockquote>

<p>I tend to be skeptical that anything objective inhering in the photo has more explanatory value than the subjective values and mental states of viewers.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Just to be clear, I think putting this in terms of objectivity misses the point. It's not that there's some objective thing working in the photo to produce Emotion A or Emotion B. It's that there's something in the combination of photographic elements and qualities with your own experiences and feelings that's at work. I do think one has to look at that <em>interplay</em>.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Another thing that strikes me here is the difference between mysticism and boudoir photos. You mentioned John Peri and have linked to other similar nudes. I see a mystical aspect to very few of those.</p>

<p>This whole subjective quandary is interesting here. Because you could certainly come back and say here's a subjective difference. You see mysticism or feel it where I don't. I don't know exactly how to square that (because there is truth to it) with the fact that I think some people see better than others and I know from my own experience that I've learned how to see better over the years and have come to realize that my previous so-called subjective ways of seeing were just not very honed or in touch. So, while I think there is a lot of subjectivity involved, I also think subjectivity can be severely flawed. That may sound like I'm suggesting a kind of objective right or wrong, but I'm not. I'm suggesting the possibility of learning and evolution in seeing as in everything else.</p>

<p>Because of certain things you've said, about your lack of knowledge of the history of photography and aesthetics, as well as your lack of desire to or inability to articulate why you like what you like, that has to go into my assessment of your subjective viewpoint. Your conclusions may very well be reasonable and I accept them as your honest conclusions, but I'd have to question how you got there.</p>

<p>Consider this. Someone without any real knowledge of Philosophy argues for free will. Just on gut feeling alone. That's subjective and that person is entitled to whatever opinion he has. I might very well agree with him that free will trumps determinism but I still won't give his opinion much weight because I know how he got there. Even if I ultimately disagreed with someone else who makes the case for determinism with a knowledge of the ins and outs of the problem and a clear articulation of the arguments against free will, I'd give his opinion more weight even though I might disagree than I would the naive guy I agree with.</p>

<p>That, to me, is how it is with subjectivity and art. Different subjective opinions carry different weight with me.</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<blockquote>

<p>You have once again used this thread to throw up (in both the sense of linking to and in the sense of vomiting) a bunch of examples and follow them with the statement that you can't say why you like them.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>Thank you, Fred. Have a nice Fourth.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>Presence of Eternity<br /> <br /> The stone grows old.<br />Eternity is not for stones.<br />But I shall go down from this airy space, this swift white<br />peace, this stinging exultation;<br />And time will come close about me, and my soul stir to the<br />rhythm of the daily round.<br />Yet, having known, life will not press so close,<br />And always I shall feel time ravel thin about me.<br />For once I stood<br />In the white windy presence of eternity.<br /> <br /> <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/eunice-tietjens">Eunice Tietjens</a></p>