My hopes were met when I first heard this principle stated by Eli Siegel, the American critic and founder of the philosophy Aesthetic Realism: “All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.” I've had the thrill of testing this principle in thousands of instances, from the first known photograph taken by Nicéphore Niépce around 1826 to the most modern work of today. It explains what makes a photograph good and how our personal questions are the questions of art--dignified and cultural!  

As a man who once felt cold to people and things didn't mean enough to me, I learned that a large reason I cared for photography is because it shows that even a fraction of a second has permanent meaning. Boredom, I also learned, is really ego in disguise--the feeling that the world isn't good enough to hold our interest. And as I studied the Siegel Theory of Opposites, I felt I had new eyes as I began seeing beauty that my conceit had obscured. Conceit is a form of contempt, described by Eli Siegel as the "disposition in every person to think he will be for himself by making less of the outside world," and there is nothing more hurtful to the creative state of mind and human relations. 

I used to think that art was a refuge, a higher realm, separate and superior to the "real" world. But art stands for how we should look at every situation, object, loved one, and the next stranger we meet. As a photographer and teacher of the art I love, I know that the study of Aesthetic Realism enables a person to be not only a deeper photographer, but a kinder, more integrated person as well.