Perspective. We all have one…and if you are “lucky” you will not be aware of it! By that I am alluding to a wise quip from the philosopher Paul Ricoeur who once noted, “You can’t have a perspective on your perspective without somehow escaping it.” The “escape” can be frightening, especially if it comes too abruptly. (See the Apostle Paul on the Damascus Road.)
Photography has helped bring this matter to my attention. This morning in The Guardian I discovered an Italian photographer, Olivo Barbieri, whose work is “interesting” with how it takes the happenstance of day-to-day life, captures it with the lens, and presents it to us. This “capture” is known as “framing” in photography. In the photography show, attached below, Barbieri displays a very wry grasp of his world and conveys it to people, such as “moi”, who appreciate the “wry” in life. I’m sure some would look at his work and say, scratching their head perhaps, “Huh?”
Perspective is a life-long concern of mine. If you read this “font of wisdom” very often, you will see how I focus on the matter, bringing emphasis to dimensions of life to which most people would not pay any attention. If we lack perspective, we often will be consumed or even devoured by one of which we are not conscious; that can, too often, bode ill for us and those in our world. Our president, and his disciples, are a current egregious example of this.
Below is a link to the Barbieri story and a copy of one of his pictures. Several of his pictures are available if you check out the link.
literary lew 