Beautiful

I hold my fathers hand for the last time.

Something I find to be true is people for the most part just want to see something beautiful. And, they do not want to engage beyond viewing, then moving on. This I find to occur often, one example being when I posted a scenic of Cedar Key from long ago. It got around three hundred views. I followed this up with a photograph of the old Sundance bar and a couple and their little dog fishing from the pier at Cedar Key. To me, these two photographs were much more interesting and intriguing. But they both received around fifty views.
I am almost to the point of growing weary of posting photographs that receive the beautiful moniker. I really do not know what I am after, for I too gravitate toward beauty, it is in our redeemed nature. But on a deeper level I desire to go beyond the surface, obvious beauty of a scene to the essence level of portraying pathos, sorrow, hope, joy, anything but beautiful. Steve Coleman the photographer from Australia uses a Mamyia7 film camera capable of producing some of the sharpest photographs imaginable, yet he deliberately chooses to blur his images by hand holding long exposures. He is weary of the arcane, landscape cookie cutter, beautiful scenes so many crank out with their Canon Mark threes.
I would ultimately strive for the photograph to touch people on a deeper level, even to make them squirm, maybe question a reason for something, to cause a reaction, an engaging. And is that not what is at the heart of art? To convey a worldview of the artist? To cause one to view the world on a deeper level beyond the easy beautiful and moving on to the next beautiful.
Ray Stevens said Everything is Beautiful, In its own way,  and he was right. It is also a terrible cliche and each time I receive a beautiful remark, I think of the song and say, whoops,I did it again, stayed upon the surface.
And I will admit, we all are out for recognition. We are busy tooting our horns and screaming for notice.
It is difficult to shun the adulation and dare perhaps offend or challenge by offering photographs or works  that go to another level, even a darker level, for it is sometimes in darkness where light is fully appreciated.
I think of the photojournalist Eugene Smith.  In the seventies I was greatly moved and influenced with his photographs of the children and families in Japan sick from mercury poisoning from a chemical plant in their community. The birth defects were rampant. Smith captured in stark black and white the pathos, the sad humanity, and yet, the boundless love of a mother to hold dearly her deformed child.
Moving stuff. Way beyond the beautiful I am too prone to. Images I hold in my mind to this day. Who holds the beautiful sunset with azaleas I just took? Few.