“Approaching Reality”

What is forbidden by the Second Commandment, (Ex 20.4 and 5.8 Dt) “You shall not make for yourself an idol,” is to try to own the vision that the eye perceives, with arrogance or impatience, whether staring for the first or umpteenth time. It is exactly the opposite of what a photographer and photography attempts to do: to try instead to approach from multiple angles, compositions, access points, what reality is. One never really retains reality in its entirety; one magnifies it, rather, in showing how it is changeable. Could it be that photographers are secular priests (or not) in the service of beauty and reality?

Here a picture taken at the flower market in New Delhi © Petr Lovigin, 2012