This is the text from the illustrated booklet "The Art of Yugen", viewable below in ISSUU.

 

Seeking Purpose

Today's fine art photography covers an incredibly wide range of styles, subjects, degrees of digital manipulation, and aesthetics. In addition to the fine art photographers are the huge numbers of mobile "iphonographers" — that is, "everyone" — that create a unimaginable number of images that are instantly distributed worldwide through social media and aggregating services such as Instagram and Pinterest. These social, ad-hoc images range from mind-boggling masteries of composition and timing to mind-numbing blandness of poor judgment and poorer taste. The ease of web publishing and blogging creates thousands of new aggregates of images every second, from all around the world.

 

In this torrent of images and styles, where do photographers look to find an aesthetic value that can define and guide their work? Does one seek to mimic the masters of the past? Or tread new digital paths laid by constantly morphing camera technology and computer software? Where is the "meaning" in photography today? What is its purpose?

 

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