on beauty in the digital age.

There was a time I ached for beauty. Recognized it as some power only beholden to those either gifted with supernatural grace or those who would chisel away their imperfections as to ascertain it. I never considered myself among the beautiful, never felt like I was born with a seat at that table. Like most, I selected to boil myself down until all that was left was the basic shape of me. And on that blank canvas, I bled.

Certainly, it was not enough to blame the internet. Fantasy and con-artistry did not begin when we pushed wires together and called them God. Show-women have been powdering their faces with aluminum for centuries. I felt no different, was no different. At some point in my mid-twenties the lights on that stage, at last, all turned down on me. Somewhere in that swallow I decided that I could not settle on the basic shape of me, and decided to paint something new.

Tonight, I have collected portraits from various socials across the internet to decorate my Gallery, and I landed on this conclusion:

Physical beauty on its own is superficial. It is only when we recognize that it is an extension and manifestation of spiritual beauty that it suddenly carries great power. The purpose of creation is that we express inner beauty outwardly; that we integrate these inner and outer parallel dimensions into one seamless whole, so that true inner beauty doesn’t remain locked inside, but is expressed outwardly in the domain of the material. The outer should not be severed from the inner, but rather reflect it.

Tonight I have decided on beauty, Not with the intention to draw some foreign eye, but instead to capture a spirit, an essence; my essence. And elected, going forward, to post only that which expresses some inner beauty outwardly. It seems the subjective experience of inner beauty may change over the course of one’s life, but perhaps can become objective when the essence of the moment it expresses is captured. Photography seems to be one of those mediums.

-JR