More Than a Rock

Shock and Awe22

Too many of today’s photographers are seduced and then seemingly transfixed by the maleficent and unsightly aspects of life—to the point that their photographs appear as calculated efforts to trumpet the praises of basic ugliness, debasement, immorality, and banality. To me, enriching one’s life through the virtue of beauty in art remains one of the pursuit’s most basic and cherished functions. I don’t know about you, but I simply fail to see (let alone understand) how my life will ever be enriched through a constant barrage of negativity and ignoble visual revelations.

—Huntington Witherill

The ways in which art may affect its audience may be characterized as either shock or awe, both of which may serve as a purpose for a given ...