Diminishing Beauty

Beauty literally stops me in my tracks. It can annoy my wife when she’s in the car because I’ll hit the brakes unexpectedly, pull over, and reach into the back seat for my camera. It might happen anywhere and if I don’t capture that right away it can fade in minutes or even seconds. Photography is about light after all, and light is often transitory, especially with scattered clouds and a storm either building or breaking up. A shaft of light will illuminate something against a dark background and I have a brief window in which to get the shot. By the time I’ve stepped out of the vehicle, turned on the camera and framed the image, a cloud may have blocked the sun and the opportunity passes.

When I am successful though and I pull up the image later on my computer, it’s a great feeling. The photos I like best all convey whatever feeling I had when I saw the scene. If the photo kindles a similar feeling in others it will sell. The ones I’ve been paid for are images of things — landscapes, street scenes, coastal scenes, loons, sunsets, and so forth. Images of my loved ones are among my favorites but I don’t put them on the website. One did get on accidentally once when I was re-sizing a batch of coastal scenes and a shot of my grandchildren looking for crabs on a beach got mixed in somehow. I didn’t realize it until someone ordered a collection of photos and I pulled up the full-resolution version of that shot from my computer. Now it hangs in a northern Maine nursing home.

Shots of my grandchildren when they’re young convey an innocence that has universal appeal. Young children are genuine; they lack pretense. With a zoom lens they don’t usually know I’m photographing them. They see me with a camera so often that they’re seldom self-conscious about it. When they become teenagers, however, that natural, unaffected demeanor fades. They’re not sure who they are themselves and that uncertainty comes through in photos — especially when they know I’m shooting in their direction. Almost never do I ask people to pose because I much prefer candid shots.

All imagery interests me, but especially other photographs. Again, my taste runs toward candid. We’re all bombarded by photos of men and women with physical beauty, but when photographed for advertising purposes they lose their charm. Subjects are paid to be pretentious. In my eyes, that disingenuousness comes through more strongly than anything else the advertiser intends. It’s worse when the models’ affectations have a sexual bent which is increasingly the case.

Often we see photographers following subjects in revealing dress and snapping away as the models try to look alluring. They strike various poses with ostentatious “come hither” expressions. Such scenes are meant to convey the alleged glamour of high fashion but it never works for me. The fakery is so obvious I can never get past it. It must work with most viewers though because that sort of advertising is ubiquitous. Some could be called soft porn, and it is always pushing limits of propriety.

And pornography which no one could call soft has become dangerously widespread with the internet. Images depicting sex without love would define it, and in my youth, Playboy Magazine was considered porn. It might not be labeled such today because still photographs of the Playboy type have given way to digital video. It’s a plague the young and old contract with the cell phones in every pocket. As with drugs and alcohol, pornography is addictive. Continued use requires stronger doses to reproduce the initial thrill and teenagers today produce their own with cell phone cameras. Our culture is increasingly coarsened in the process. Porn destroys relationships from teenage romances to marriages and professional counselors warn us there’s no end in sight.

Consumers are mostly male but females are catching up. A 2011 article the UK Guardian claimed one in three users were female and 17% of women were addicted. Porn actors degrade themselves and watchers degrade themselves vicariously. How widespread is pornography? Statistics vary: anywhere from 15-75% of Americans use it regularly. Extensive revelations of Jeffrey Epstein’s rich and powerful associates abusing underage girls seem to mirror trends in porn users toward child porn, the only kind that’s still illegal.

For how long will it remain so? That depends on how much society values the innocence of youth. Will Epstein Attorney Alan Dershowitz prevail in his arguments to lower the age of consent? Will Republican congressmen persuade Attorney General William Barr to prosecute internet porn producers more vigorously? There are forces at work both pushing and pulling.

Beauty, defined as: “a combination of qualities that pleases the intellect or moral sense,” is becoming endangered when seeing images of fellow human beings. Beautiful landscapes, however, remain plentiful.

Too Much Beauty

Sunset  from my backyard last summer

During a difficult period some years ago, an old priest/counselor told me that as I endured pain, my capacity for feeling joy would grow commensurately. It seemed small comfort at the time, but now I believe he was on to something. Grieving the death of my son in June, I’m going through another hard time. A friend who also lost a son to addiction told me his grief comes in waves. I’m seeing now what he meant and I’ve been swept along on such a wave for days as I write. I have to let it carry me and feel the grief, but not let it drown me or smash me on the rocks. When the wave passes I’ll be able again to sense beauty around me, which is always there whether I perceive it or  not.

Leaves falling in the yard last month

He was an Anglican priest and his son was alcoholic too. He understood the anguish I felt watching my own son spiral down. When I asked how to deal with it, he said: “Carry it.”

“Carry it?” I asked. “That’s the best you can do for me?” It was, he said, so I tried carrying it with as much dignity as I could muster and then asked: “What’s next?”

“Embrace it,” he said.

“Really?” I said. “I don’t ever see myself doing that,” and I didn’t for years. While my son was alive I still thought I might do something to steer him from his self-destructive path, but his death ended that. I haven’t been embracing my grief; I’ve been wrestling with it. I grapple onto it and try to throw it aside. Sometimes I get some respite before it comes back. Will I ever come to embrace it? I don’t know. The old priest was right about the joy part though. I’m having my moments between waves.

Grandson Henry in a pout

I’m seeing too much beauty around to record and preserve, though I try very hard. It’s a nice problem to have. I’ve been able to extract increasing measures of joy in attempts to replicate it. Never do I go anywhere without a good camera near at hand. If it’s not slung over my shoulder, it’s in my car or truck parked nearby. If I’m taking pictures, I know I’m healing. In letters, emails, and texts, I try to use words as a medium for capturing and preserving it, and those go to people I love. Occasionally I use this space to express what I’m feeling, but in a somewhat muted form.

Grandchildren on their porch in Sweden, Maine

Whether my method of capture is visual or verbal, it always falls short. The scene itself is always more beautiful than my picture of it; the thought or feeling is always more profound than my description of it. However inadequate my recording efforts, they please me more as time goes by. Pictures I took two, three, or ten years ago seem more adequate because the memory of the experience has faded while the quality of my visual or verbal facsimile remains undiminished.

With my wife and grandson at Colosseum last month

My pictures are my own. I don’t sell them and I’m the only one who sees most of them. Every Christmas, however, I collect four or five hundred “best of the year” images and put them onto miniature flash drives for my children. These they insert into digital picture frames I gave them years ago. When I visit, I see those images displayed in five-second intervals on their walls. It’s possible they only turn the frames on when I’m visiting, but I don’t think so. I suspect they’re used often because the pictures are almost as meaningful to them as they are to me. Every shot is imbued with whatever I was feeling as I saw the beauty in the loved one or the scene. I saw and felt something exquisite each time I snapped the shutter.

From Rome's Palatine Hill last month

Before I had a good digital camera, I always had a good film camera and I shot slides rather than photos. The light capture was better in slides and capturing light is what photography is all about. Today, I much prefer seeing my digital photos on a computer screen or digital picture frame than on a print. Prints are disappointing, but I still enjoy them. I can derive pleasure while learning to dry mount, select a matte, and put them together in the right frame.

Lila, Luke, and Henry on their trampoline last month

Though I seldom read what I’ve written after it’s mailed, sent, or published, I often look at my pictures. As when listening to an old song or smelling an old, familiar scent, seeing my images of special people and beautiful scenes brings it all back. They help me realize I have much for which to be thankful. Thankful to whom? Why the God Who made us, Who sustains us, and Who calls us home when He’s ready of course. Who else?