“Faced with the blazing magnificence of the everyday, the artist is both humbled and provoked. There are now photographs of events on an unimaginable scale: the death of stars, the birth of galaxies, soup-stirrings near the dawn of Time. Bright crowds of suns gather in the wildernesses of the sky. Magellanic clouds of glory, heavenly Pisan towers set in a celestial Campo dei Miracoli, lean across the frame. When we look at these images, there is, yes, legitimate wonderment at our own lengthening reach and grasp. But it would be vain indeed to praise our puny handiwork—the mastery of the Hubble-wielders, the computer enhancers, the colorizers, all the true-life-fantasist counterparts of Hollywood’s techno-wizards and imagineers—when the universe is putting on so utterly unanswerable a show. Before the mystery of being, what is there to do but hang our heads?

This is irksome. This, naturally, pisses us off.

There is that within us which believes us worthy of the stars. Turn right on this forking path and you find god, turn left and there is art, its uncowed ambition, its glorious irreverent over-reach. In our hearts we believe—we know—that our images are capable of being the equals of their subjects. Our creations can go the distance with Creation; more than that, our imagining—our imagemaking—is an indispensable part of the the great work of making real. Yes, I will even assert as much as that. (Usually I make such assertions when I’m alone in the sealed privacy of the bathroom, but today all bathroom truths must come out to play.)”

JKG, April 2019

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