Jan said,
On a more serious note. This thread is my "thread of the month" it's like there are two separate worlds at the table, tax consultants and philosophers. The line up in this thread is definitely qualified and it's first rate. It doesn't get better than this!
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I agree, as well that this is a very interesting and animated discussion. I was asking myself why-- how could taxes and aesthetics possibly mix and be interesting, even stimulating?
I wonder if it is because we are trying to see if there is some standard outside of our subjectivity which makes us feel this is that definition is truer? As this thread has gone along, I note that it swings like a big river from the high-toned to the tax code, from the tax code to experiences of our own with taxes and with galleries and with selling work, and then it swings again towards loftier considerations.
So then I started reflecting on my own pictures. Ruben was saying that Wikipedia has a list of the Fine Arts, and then he made the statement that true art might or might not be part of that list-- again, that notion that there is some kind of standard or some kind of True Aspiration that goes on. When I go shooting, I love to just shoot, to get into a rhythm, to get "lost" in that rhythm. I love to just see. This is why for me it is often very enjoyable to shoot with another photographer, who also gets it, that wonderful activity part, rather than sightseeing with my wife and forcing her to wait for me or me for her, etc etc.
So there is the act of photographing. Then there is evaluating. I am happiest when I just KNOW the picture I am taking or just took is going to be a good one. I am often puzzled at how I know, and how often the prints prove me right. And then there are the surprises-- wow, I forgot I took that one. That really came out good! As if someone else took the shot! There are also the ones that are probably going to be good, but I know I'll be doing some work on the print. Work in the sense that I didn't quite nail it, but it's good. It's going to be good enough. And of course most of what I shoot is dross. But, I am learning something from the duds, and you could say the errors, mistakes, grab shots, the hurried shots, the tourist shots, all the clunkers nevertheless are part of the path to those moments of knowing the shot was a winner or those surprises when it was as if another person shot that...
Isn't this sort of involvement in our own unique individual way, part of what art is, and what being an artist is? To raise our own inner bar by both practice and study-- in other words, Ruben's idea of "True Art?" Or is this too subjective?