Participants: EP, BR, ZW, LW, SG, AG
- The reading posed a bit of a challenge for some of the LPE students because of the contrast between beauty and the sublime. Adams appears to have his own definition of ‘beauty’ which is not always easily understood.
- Beauty is connected with truth / things that are important
- Distinction between photography and form; not always clear, but Adams seems to refer to form as something more than simply physical, but perhaps metaphysical (establishing coherence, or bringing things into order)
- Is the sublime a subset of the beautiful?
- Question: in our own photography, do we think we are creating beauty? (this raised a question for me: do we look for beauty, or does beauty look for us? do we consciously seek out or seek to create the beautiful, or are we surprised / captured by it?)
- AG suggested that some of my comments reminded her of Gilbert (2015)
- Art as a witness to the beautiful. Not naïve (because we all know what the world is like) …and yet…
- An approximation of the beautiful
- Does beauty evoke an emotion? And if so, is beauty dependent upon our emotional state?
- “An artwork should not appear to have been hard work.” p.28
References
Adams, R. (1996) Beauty in photography: essays in defense of traditional values. (2nd ed) New York, N.Y: Aperture.
Gilbert, E. (2015) Big magic: creative living beyond fear. New York: Riverhead Books.
The Self and the Other 