A quote of a few profound words -and a "funny" stairway

[Mira]

A friend of mine, with whom I took a trip to the Grand Canyon and Bryce Canyon the year before I met you guys wrote this to me in a note this morning.
I think all of us could appreciate the sentiments expressed, they describe what we are trying to do here in the photo forum, and of course, also in the rest of our lives.

Throwing in a stairways photo reject.

I've been reading a collection of Joseph Campbell's lectures and the last one is about the role and place of the artist and I thought of you. He's talking about Aquinas saying that three things are needed for beauty: integritas (wholeness), harmony and radiance. Campbell says of Integritas:

"To appreciate the effect of this principle, the function of which is to create an enclosed hermetic field of self-defined and self-defining impractical relationships, one may regard any collection of objects whatsoever, say a clutter of things on a table, and in imagination put a frame around them. Everything within the frame is now to be regarded as one thing, not as a collection of unrelated objects of various use, but as the related parts of a composition."

So I think I have a better understanding now of what you were trying to explain to me during that wondrous trip we took through Canyon country, of how framing a photograph is what takes it out of the realm of pretty picture and into the realm of art.

[dixiegrrrrl]

1. Awesome perspective, beautifully expressed.

[elleng]

2. ART!

[Celebration]

3. Beautiful!

Photo and quotation.

Signed,

A Huge Joseph Campbell Fan