I continue to read On Photography by Susan Sontag.  Today I finished the essay entitled, America, Seen Through Photographs, Darkly.  There Sontag surveys the intent of a number of well known chroniclers of our grand experiment, beginning with Walt Whitman, concluding with commentary on the life work of photographer Diane Arbus.  Sontag is a skilled writer:

Photography is a kind of overstatement, a heroic copulation with the material world.

To discover (through photographing) that life is “really a melodrama,” to understand the camera as a weapon of aggression, implies there will be casualties.  “I am sure there are limits,” [Arbus] wrote. “God knows when the troops are advancing on you, you do approach that stricken feeling where you perfectly well can get killed.”

The essay on America will be revisited again, as I made notes, highlighted lines and paragraphs.  I am prompted to ask, What do I want in the act of choosing subjects for my camera?  Surely the question will be in the background, beneath the surface of conscious reason, enduring, not unlike a silent oracle which never delivers a final answer. 

I am drawn to capturing images of the natural world.  My mind is conveniently seduced to interpret what is discovered in nature as beautiful, as overflowing with meaning.  I choose to believe that the American experiment will proceed by trial and error, as indeed will the globalized community of peoples and cultures — making life incrementally beautiful, just, reciprocally sustaining…  This I believe, no matter the evidence.

These photos were taken yesterday.