Our Inherent Desire

     As per the request of my professor, I read two very intriguing and enlightening passages:
The Photographer's Eye by John Szarkowski and Why We Make Pictures by Hirsch.
     The latter passage brought up the question of why everyone is born with this inherent desire to make pictures whether that be with a photograph or a canvas or a slate of marble, we all seek to make the mundane special. Upon reading this, I really connected with this feeling and began to have flash backs of when I was just a child. For whatever reason it is built into our bones; the uncontrollable urge to fill the pure white, blank, and empty page of paper up with lively colors and create new worlds and stories along with them; to give the shape of a castle to something as shapeless as the sand; and the same goes with photography.
     This provides a proper segway into the former passage I read. With the birth and evolution of photography, we could see this inherent desire bloom like wildfire. Most adults grow out of making art from paints and sculpture mainly because they don't have the aptitude, so they find other interests to fill that void. But with the dawn of the camera, that all changed. Not every man could be a Picasso, but every man had the same potential to be a photographer as it was easy to use and inexpensive. Many criticized this craze due to the fact that many photographers had no purpose or meaning in their work. But they couldn't be more wrong, according to Szarkowski. Through photography we could see hundreds more facial expressions and tens more hand gestures than a traditional artist, we could stop time and see a horse in full gallop or depict the speed of a busy intersection. Photography though limited by reality can do pretty much anything because reality is truly boundless