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It has always seemed ironic to me, that in these large banquet hall panoramic photographs, the important guests of honor at the head main table are usually small way in the background, while the people in the lesser table, the perhaps more socially undesirable, who have been stuck as far away as possible from the seats of power, end up in the foreground large and important in full detail. A case of democracy by photography.

May 30 73

"How strange. A disaster occurs and still a man notices a picture. p79

Nabakov - Laughter in the Park

Hugh Eduard intro to New American People

There is no better way to identify than objectivity without detachment...

...they were rooted in the ordinary and the commonplace, and derived from them their energy and freedom from temporal aims, as do most works which have a vitality that is not synthetic, factitious, or exterior to them.

But objectivity is no enough without

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other gifts to complement it, and the realism of the ordinary cannot become memorable without the attributes of evocation and suggestion. Perception, discrimination and personal style are all necessary for the transformation of the commonplace: anybody's snapshots are what you have without them. This transformation, eminently possible with the camera and one of the richest traits of its genius...

Zola: A work of art is a detail of nature seen through a temperament.

...the medium is not more important than any of the other essential elements which must work together in equilibrium to bring to permanence the elusive and ineffable.

Aug 2. 73

Every man beareth the whole stampe of humane condition.

PXiV introduction

Montaigne - John Florio translation