The Beautiful Burden -> Blake Andrews on La Pura Vida →

Since its inception, photography has been a uniquely accurate method of visually describing the real world. Photography can also be applied —and has been used increasingly for roughly the past quarter century— as a tool to illustrate what’s in an artist’s head. Point a camera at a food prop and the picture might describe an advertising idea. Photograph an elaborate set on the street and the picture might describe a pre-conceived fantasy world. Or use a computer to collage several images and the resulting picture might approximate a painting. These are all legitimate uses of photography, but for me they are generally less interesting that what you get when you point a camera at objects as they are found in the world. When put to the task of blunt conceptual illustration, photography’s most profound and beautiful burden — to show us the world as it is— is ignored. (…)