"America, Seen Through Photographs Darkly"

One aspect of this article that was discussed was the beauty and ugliness in the subject matter of photographs. My thoughts on this topic is that there is beauty and ugliness in photographs. Obviously, you wouldn't look at a photograph such as "Napalm Girl" and see beauty in it. That is a photograph that is awful and terrible to look at. It is a photograph that is documenting something terrible that happened. But at the same time, Edward Weston can take a photograph of a pepper, and it is beautiful. Some people look at the subject, and the subject only. They don't look at the beauty in the form of it, or the way the light hits it. The article also brought up celebrities; "No moment is more important than any other moment; no person is more interesting than any other person." I believe that when photographing people, it is the inner beauty that radiates through the physical appearance. And in portraiture, I think that a successful portrait is one that shows something about the subject, one that can show "true beauty." "In photographing dwarfs, you don't get majesty and beauty. You get dwarfs." This statement I strongly disagree with. I feel that a successful photograph would bypass the physical attributes of the subject and focus more upon what is truly trying to be said about its subject.

I found this article to be very interesting. It really brought up some points that were important to photography. I don't think that you need a gorgeous model, or celebrity, or even a flower to see beauty. A photograph should be able to show more than just the obvious.