beauty everywhere

By a series of nosings-around I came to flickr.com, which was boasting this quotation this morning:

I hate flowers. I paint them because they're cheaper than models and they don't move. - Georgia O'Keefe

I want to say for the record that I don't want to be that kind of photographer. Sadly, at the moment I think I am. I'm shy of asking people to share themselves with me in such an intimate act. Sometimes I photograph animals, but it is people which fascinate me; people personally, people emotionally, people aesthetically.

The curve of a hip, the curve of a smile, the places where we are all the same, the spaces where some of us are so different...people are beautiful. All people are beautiful somehow, even the cruel ones whose beauty is in the skill or talent or grace of their cruelty, even those whose beauty is less commonly accepted or understood...the joy of art is that you can find anything in anything, and what you find, you can share. Some artists choose to find ugliness everywhere. I choose to find beauty.