Beauty will save the world II
A couple of days ago I quoted the greatest novelist the world has ever read, Fyodor Dostoevsky. His enigmatic statement that, "Beauty will save the world," (from his novel entitled, The Idiot) has engendered wide debate over the years.
My own view is that he was simply applying his Russian Orthodox faith in the power of aesthetics (Ikons as aids to prayer), to indicate that Beauty (with a capital 'B') has a redemptive function. This has its roots in Plato's doctrine of universal ideals of which Beauty, Truth and Love forms a kind of trinity underlying the meaning of the cosmos.
So how can photography help us here? Well, those unfocussed lights are naturally enlarged in the lens to produce a pattern that some might call beautiful amidst the growing darkness as night falls. So despite some people thinking the steel mill is ugly (see my next photograph), there is an underlying beauty there that can be brought out by the camera and lens.
Beauty will save the world II
A couple of days ago I quoted the greatest novelist the world has ever read, Fyodor Dostoevsky. His enigmatic statement that, "Beauty will save the world," (from his novel entitled, The Idiot) has engendered wide debate over the years.
My own view is that he was simply applying his Russian Orthodox faith in the power of aesthetics (Ikons as aids to prayer), to indicate that Beauty (with a capital 'B') has a redemptive function. This has its roots in Plato's doctrine of universal ideals of which Beauty, Truth and Love forms a kind of trinity underlying the meaning of the cosmos.
So how can photography help us here? Well, those unfocussed lights are naturally enlarged in the lens to produce a pattern that some might call beautiful amidst the growing darkness as night falls. So despite some people thinking the steel mill is ugly (see my next photograph), there is an underlying beauty there that can be brought out by the camera and lens.