“There is a difference between finding a phantasy in memory and making a phantasm from memory.” —St. Augustine

Introduction

The average attention span is around 47 seconds, according to an interview by the American Psychological Association dated February 2023. A study referenced by The Center for Brain, Mind, and Society states that the phone was engaged at an average of 228 times a day, with each session lasting only about 10 seconds. Why is this relevant? Important works of philosophy and literature shape our society as they are consumed by one person at a time. However, these rewarding subjects are sometimes lengthy, oftentimes difficult, and therefore take time to be understood—even at a basic level. Without stating the obvious, one can infer in general terms the death of attention span is immediately followed by societal decline.

How is this related to photography? For one, it is the tremendous production of images that have funneled us to this point. At no time in history have images so engrossed every hour of human life. Images have become as crucial as the air we breathe. Consequently, apathy to their existence becomes inevitable, effectively confining discernment to some forgotten corner of the faculty. An article at the Pew Research Center explores the viability of humans losing agency over their lives due to advancements in artificial intelligence and apps that augment and streamline activities. Even a simple visit to any major social media platform prove this to be true, as the platform’s algorithm dictates what information pass through the human senses, with each piece vying for equal attention without consideration for moral or intellectual equivalency. Most of these derive their power through images, and for the most part, photography. This positions photography as more influential than it ever had been since the last century. Yet to precisely define its influence comes after defining its nature.

The 21st century photograph is different from those that existed from 19th or 20th century in terms of how they occupy our minds. The latter created a sense of alienation from artistic realism, while simultaneously gaining utility and popularity through its capability to imprint a scene in a fraction of a second. The former, while retaining these qualities, gains centrality in media and communication—a kind of omnipresence that saturates our lives and shapes ours worldviews which the 19th and 20th century photograph did not occupy in depth. Plato’s disdain for the image twice removed from reality is a prophecy fulfilled in our time, perhaps even adding a third layer since these images occupy our screens in a kind of transient, non-physical way. In an ever-morphing sociological landscape shaped by images, the 21st century photograph lends itself for demystification.

The impetus of this writing rises from a 20-year photography practice combined with the eagerness to edify the soul, cultivate intellect, and contribute to the discourse of aesthetics. A continued understanding of photography is valuable as the rate of human advancement multiplies in myriad of ways, particularly during the surge of artificial intelligence, proliferation of deceptive imagery, and extreme shortening of mental focus. These phenomena are linked with the exponential production of digital images in the last 25 years. These advancements, miraculous as they seem to be, are nevertheless contributing to the collective intellectual regression and moral decay of society as photography permeates our lives from the individual to a wider global sense. Therefore, it is important to explore some facets of photography’s ontology as it inadvertently shapes our seeing, our memories, our knowledge, and ultimately our perception of reality. By elucidating some of its substance, we gain a sharper analysis which aids in determining the distinction between the images that flood our lives.

Overview

To begin, there is enough literature that describes the essence of a photograph, and it is naive not to acknowledge some of the important writings already in circulation. However, the selection of works cited are limited due to multiple reasons. First, this work is being completed to bring the aesthetic experience of writing to the author. Being then a personal work, the author applies his subjectivity and biases out of personal beliefs and worldview. This apologia is flawed in a sense that nobody does not write from a blank worldview in the absolute sense, but it is necessary to mention for ethical reasons. Second, while the goal is to produce a piece of writing that is comprehensive enough to be valuable, it is being completed outside of professional, academic, or personal obligations. The time is simply inadequate to finish a monograph expositing all aspects of a photograph’s ontology. Third, the author is a practitioner and not a scholar. Although he appreciates scholarship enough to strive for excellence, he understands shortcomings will be inadvertent relative to the copious amount of information already available. There are some more, but the point is held across the board.

Some classical philosophers and those who develop theories of beauty before photography are also cited throughout the work whenever appropriate. But of special interest to the author are the following:

Kendall Walton’s essay, Transparent Pictures: On the Nature of Photographic Realism, is an important essay that elucidates our perception of reality based on one of the facets of a photograph’s ontology, which he calls transparency. He argues that “the special nature of photography will remain obscure unless we think of it in another way as well—as contribution to the enterprise of seeing.” Photographs are transparent things, according to Kendall. We not only see the image of the photograph, we see the photographed subject, irregardless of mechanical imperfections and perceptual challenges. This essay is an important treatment of the way photography shapes our seeing, which would have been difficult to comprehend, perhaps unimaginable, before the advent of photography.

Walter Benjamin’s essay, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, is unavoidable in the construction of photographic thought. Although the essay is riddled with politics, his astute observation on the aura of an authentic artwork and the intellection of photographic production remains a monumental treatise on aesthetics and photographic ontology. Credit also belongs to John Berger, whose book and television show, Ways of Seeing, expounded on Benjamin’s work and impacted my way of understanding the visual arts during my undergraduate years.

André Bazin’s insights from The Ontology of the Photographic Image remain vital as he expounds on the function of the photograph’s realism and its relation to the prior and present functions of art. With some general historical descriptions, he describes photography as liberating the plastic arts from the obligation of creating realism, and traces its similarity to ancient Egyptian embalming. His essay offers a good starting point in the general functions of photography as a primarily forensic expression, and how painting and sculpture fulfill different functions since its invention.

Wilhelm Worringer’s modern essay Transcendence and Immanence in Art is substantial in explaining the dichotomy between aesthetics and art history, the circular reasoning of making Classical art the standard of all aesthetics, the psychoanalytical approach to religion, and the relationship of mankind towards the world. Although published in 1953, it contains nothing about photography since it is written from an all-encompassing, historical viewpoint. This essay may be valuable in evaluating the terminal experience of photography, but not in defining its particularities. This is important to mention since immanence and transcendence are central concepts discussed, but it is worthy to note Worringer’s essay as irrelevant for the most part.

Much of the following content define the immanence of photography in contrast to painting, as they are often the two most subject discussed when it comes to the visual arts. Film and other decorative arts are left in the periphery, and though this will leave some facets of photography untouched, it is the hope of the author that the regurgitated knowledge between painting and photography will clarify the most common confusions between the two.

On Immanence

Writing with light is the literal translation of photography, and in many ways its accepted orthodox definition. From Nicéphore Niépce‘s View from the Window at Les Gras to the James Webb Space Telescope, photographic methods can be summarized by depicting appearances through the natural properties of light and its process of production–whether by chemical reaction or digitization. A photograph then, by this general description, is a testament or a record of the natural world obtained by various photographic techniques. Let this be the fundamental and natural description of a photograph, and all other imagery that do not fit this description be written off as something else.

Why this matters is directly tied to the fact that a photograph is entirely dependent on physical circumstances whenever it is created. A photograph’s origin will always be connected to a specific time in space, or a setting, a context, a place, an event, a period of time, or an individual. It is oftentimes pointed in narrative, although the actual image may or may not be sharp or crisp in resolution. It is always an image made from the natural world through a human being and a mechanical equipment. One may say that a photograph is always immanent.

Immanence is a theological concept that relays something, or someone, is always present in the material world. While one may argue that not every photograph possess apparent immanence, photography is an act of documentation which has the highest capacity to represent perceived reality, much closer in proximity to writing than to painting and music. It is an act that is consistently rooted in physical reality.

Immanence separates photography from the other visual arts and practices, particularly painting and design. The renaissance man and humanist Leon Battista Alberti writes,“The aim of painting: to give pleasure, good will, and fame to the painter more than riches. if painters will follow this, their painting will hold their eyes and the soul of the observer.” (Alberti, On Painting) In contrast to immanence, a painting’s aim is always transcendence. Transcendence, meaning “to climb” or “beyond,” describing a kind of quality that goes past the material world, is the nature of painting. For every painting, though they represent immanent things, do not point to the present state of things when they are created (art from the Medieval age exemplifies this fact). The very act of painting is the process of making beauty visible, though there are many grades of beauty and one painting may accomplish more of what the rest attempt to do. Its initial and final act always points to an ideal world. It is a world of forms outside the material, in polar opposite to the world of photography.

Consider this absurd experiment, and imagine a beautiful lake. Now imagine a photographer and a painter approach the same scene. Since this serves as a metaphysical experiment, let the imagination extend so that both persons produce an artifact corresponding to their craft at the same amount of time. For the sake of the argument, also imagine that the final images are the same, indistinguishable from each other—every blade of grass, every hanging leaf, and every reflection of cloud in the water is exactly the same for both image. To push this experiment even further, imagine the same two persons visit the same lake and produce the same thing ad infinitum. What then is the difference between the photograph and the painting, if the setting, persons, and images are all the same? It is that the photograph will always be a photograph, and the painting will always be a painting, irrelevant to their images. If this seemed to be an absurdity or a miserable tautology, what then of the photograph that is pretentiously artistic, or the hyperrealist painting that demonstrates nothing but to look like a photograph?

“The painter strives and competes with nature,” (Leonardo da Vinci, Notebooks), while a photograph is always submissive to nature. It is that the photograph’s conception and existence is conditional to the existing, visible lake, and the method to produce the painting, although it is a painting of the lake, does not—it is a product of one’s hand and body from perception and sensory interpretations of the mind. Perhaps a more succinct observation can be found in Shih-T’ao’s writing about the art. “A painting receives the ink, ink receives the brush, the brush from the artist’s wrists, and the artist’s wrists from his directing mind. This receiving is like the way life is created by heaven and forms are made by the earth.” (Shih-t’ao, Quotes on Painting). The same cannot be said about a photograph. “There is one clear difference between photography and painting,” writes Kendall Walton, “A photograph is always a photograph of something that actually exists. Even when photographs portray such nonentities as werewolves and Martians, they are nonetheless photographs of actual things: actors, stage sets, costumes. Painting needn’t actual things.” (Walton, Transparent Pictures: On the Nature of Photographic Realism) Each artifact produced by the photographer and painter, though they appear the same, are ontologically different from each other and therefore demand different aesthetic evaluations.

Walter Benjamin takes the contrast even sharper: “How does the cameraman compare with the painter? To answer this we take recourse to an analogy with a surgical operation. The surgeon represents the polar opposite of the magician. The magician heals a sick person by laying on of the hands; the surgeon cuts into the patient’s body. The magician maintains the natural distance between the patient and himself; though he reduces it very slightly by the laying on of hands, he greatly increases it by virtue of his authority. The surgeon does exactly the reverse, he greatly diminishes the distance between himself and the patient by penetrating into the patient’s body, and increases it but little by the caution with which his hand moves among the organs. In short, in contrast to the magician–who is still hidden in the medical practitioner–the surgeon at the decisive moment abstains from facing the patient man to man; rather, it is through the operation that he penetrates into him. Magician and surgeon compare to painter and cameraman. The painter maintains in his work a natural distance from reality, the cameraman penetrates deeply into its web.” (Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction)

The depth of difference between painting and photography becomes more pronounced when one leaves this metaphysical experiment and engage in the actual act of creating a photograph or painting. Walton writes, “Compare Francisco Goya’s etchings the Disaster of War with the Civil War photographs by Matthew Brady and his associates […]. It is hard to resist describing the difference by saying that the photographs have a kind of immediacy or realism which the etchings lack. (Walton, Transparent Pictures: On the Nature of Photographic Realism) Photography imprints the immediate. Painting takes time and patience, its very act a question of will and determination, and its completion a test of perseverance. The photograph is reproducible, and though printing imperfections exist, it is always the same photograph. The finished painting is a unique artifact, even if the same painter painted the same scene twice, no two paintings will be identical in the ontological sense—even if they looked exactly alike. If done well, painting provides a visual echo for the sublime. On the other hand, photography’s capacity for immediacy is unmatched by any other discipline. It is the only medium capable of providing documentation derived from a split second in time. It is this distinguished capability that warrants its indispensability and by extension, its true aesthetic and cultural value. By its normative ontology, it is also the medium least able to speak about the timeless and eternal, even though this is achieved from time to time.

Limitations on the representation of reality and the way we see have already been discussed by Walton’s seminal essay, and will not be reiterated here. But to what extent can alteration affect a photograph’s ontology? For it is evident that photographic techniques and human perception fall short in translating reality, and the photographer needs to intervene after the initial act of documentation to enhance the appearance of the final image. This act is similar to the writer polishing the initial draft, for a simple and raw assemblage of words does not accomplish describing in the truest sense, nor is it a mark of virtue or intelligence. Can the same thing be said about photography?

To answer this question, several things need to be addressed. The photograph that is most faithful to its own ontological nature is always the original, oftentimes the negative—which is the morphe. The morphe contains all the ontological basis that define the photograph as a photograph, but it is not necessarily the most valuable. Its mode of expression may vary, specially in the digital age. It may exhibit appearances that are not found in the material world, although no photograph ever existed that is not from the material realm.

A photograph will always be a product of reality and will always represent it in varying degrees by virtue of its ontology, but its image—its schema—may sometime contradict its ontological basis. Not all photographs present reality as it were. Sometimes the schema amplifies this confusion because of its duplicity (or reproducibility), scalability, and inconsistencies in production. There are photographs that do not look like photographs, and yet they are. Therefore it is important to separate and define the photograph from its image. To answer the question, a photograph’s ontology does not change simply because it is altered—only the schema of the photograph changed. The morphe remains relatively unchanged until it is physically destroyed (or digitally corrupted).

The schema of the photograph is separate from the photograph’s existence. Consider this question: can one recognize transcendence while looking at a photograph? Yes, it is an effect of mastery and craftsmanship, perhaps even cultural events, that one may feel inspired while looking at a photograph. But the effect is secondary, one that drives from the perception of appearance, depending even on the setting it is viewed or its production process. A beautiful studio portrait can be viewed on cellphone or a canvas print framed in mahogany, and its effect would rather vary, even though it is the same photograph. The same can be said about color photo converted to black and white for the purpose of creating an aesthetic experience. So while a photograph’s morphe is a unique object in reality, its method of production and schema can dictate its aesthetics and transcendence.

One does not commonly discern and internalize transcendence by looking at a photograph’s negative. “From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the “authentic” print makes no sense.” (Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction) The negative has to be cropped, adjusted, and sometimes altered to be presented in a certain way to create the effect of transcendence commonly attributed to photographs of significant cultural and aesthetic value. It can be said that a photograph’s transcendence is a second-degree effect coming from its visage. It is a quality that is contrary to its essence, and this is why photographs that are made to look transcendent while failing to be immanent feel unnatural, agnostic, even pretentious if done without skill or technique.

This effect of transcendence is dependent on its methods of production, forms of publication, timing, and the individual viewer. A photograph’s appearance can be revisited on multiple points in time. This is specially true with digital negatives, which can be revisited years after they are made to reinterpret its components. This is a photograph’s malleability.

Methods of producing the photograph can greatly affect its transcendental quality, and most photographers do not shy from post-production to enhance their work. Post-production is an accepted practice, in fact it is unavoidable since every negative is already shaped by the manufacturer of the film or factory producing the equipment. Photographers who mainly use digital cameras recognize the camera manufacturer’s color science as an influence in their work. Film photographers use film stocks. None of these are manufactured by the photographer. Therefore, a negative is already pre-interpreted, and post-production is the method of subverting or enhancing these pre-interpretations.

The matter then arrives quickly to photojournalism—to what point can a photograph be altered and still be considered a photograph? The argument here is the photographer’s ethical practice, and not the photograph’s ontology. Consider photojournalist imagery converted to black and white. Is the world black and white? Can these be considered other than photographs? The point is this issue should be considered on a case-by-case basis, which includes the photographer’s intent and ethical practices.

Forms of publication also greatly affect the perception of art, including photography intended for exhibitions. This matter is completely elucidated by Walter Benjamin’s phenomenal essay, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Benjamin writes: “One might subsume the eliminated element in the term “aura” and go on to say: that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art.” The point is the effects of art, including photography, vary depending on the context it is viewed. For example, a black and white photograph of Cloud Gate inside a modern art magazine can mean differently if the same is found in a hip-hop or philosophy magazine.

Timing also enhances a photograph’s transcendence, depending on the current political landscape. A certain photograph of one who wishes to run for office can sometimes be elevated over the others to project an image of authority and expertise. If the candidate won, his or her image—the photograph—usually circulates in social media to be venerated or metaphorically spat on. If the candidate lost, his or her photograph is forgotten. In a way, the photograph gains transcendence because of certain conditions it is associated with at a specific point in time.

Individual appreciation of a photograph’s aesthetic is a matter of personal sentiment, which had been a subject of aesthetics throughout the centuries. Personal education, a survey of the history of aesthetics, holistic life experiences, and practice all contribute to an individual’s ability to appreciate photography.

The Four Principal Causes of Photography

It is necessary to address, even rather briefly, ontological causations that will be referred to as a principal cause. A principal cause is the primary motivator of a photograph’s creation of which there are four: political, economic, existential, forensic. All four contribute to a photograph’s inherent immanence, while also being rooted in material reality. Attributing a principal cause to a photograph is possible when valid functions of human will and cognition can be established. Simply put, it would be impossible to attribute a principal cause to an elephant who happened to pick up a wildlife photographer’s camera and took photos with it. Those photographs, though they are true photographs in ontology, cannot be attributed with any of the principal causes already listed. This becomes complex if language learning models develop to general artificial intelligence and inhabit cameras in the future. However, it is currently pointless to probe that hypothetical situation, and it will not be discussed due to a lack of facts and data.

Political: These are photographs that exist for political purposes, including religious or cultish devotion. Examples are portraits of dictators being paraded while mounted on a vehicle, official government portraits, royal portraits, or even photographs of religious leaders or popular revolutionaries. These also include any that persuade individuals to opine on political issues: any attractive or unflattering photo of an individual with political sway, photographs of secular or religious protestors, and portraits of the seemingly oppressed. Photographs made for political causes may have some economic motivation behind them, but not necessarily so. These are primarily political instruments to convey a particular message.

Economic: These are photographs in advertising whose main function is to create income for the photographer or publisher. These are also the some of the most common photographs found, even if not obviously so at first glance. As an example, look at photographic prints of beautiful landscapes at a car dealer’s lounge. While these photographs are not for sale, their primary purpose is to make the customer return to the dealership by creating a sense of well-being for an otherwise boring and mundane experience. It is the same for photographs hanging on hospital walls, shopping malls, and publications like book and magazine covers. Photographs displayed on social media intended to reinforce a sale also belong in this category, though oftentimes they are branded as lifestyle and aesthetic work.

Existential: These are photographs motivated by self-fulfillment, self-expression, and self-preservation. Oftentimes, these create an aesthetic or nostalgic experience for the photographer and the viewer. These are perhaps the most commonly shared by any individual on the 21st century: selfies on the beach, black and whites by an amateur, portraits of family members, photos of pets, and other sentimental subjects. These are often intended to nourish a person’s being, satisfy curiosity, or relieve boredom.

Forensic: These are photographs whose main purpose is to prove a theory, reinforce an idea, clarify an instruction, or establish a fact. These are the kind found within school textbooks, scientific journals, and instructional materials. These prove or dismiss a crime, record tumors or skin conditions, or argue a scientific fact from universal to microscopic scale.

All of these can be combined for a more apt description of a specific photograph’s ontology, such as political-economic, existential-forensic, forensic-economic-political, and so on, but any photograph will always have one principal cause that will be eminent over any of them. By identifying the true principal cause of a photograph, one is aided in evaluating any photograph without being deceived of its appearance and form. Misidentifying the principal cause of a photograph conceals in some part its essence, and can lead to a relapse in judgment.

On Appreciation

Establishing then some of the ontological basis for photographs, one must necessarily conclude that judging by mere appearances is a sign of negligent intellect when it comes to the evaluation of images. This is important to remember when formalist criticisms of painting are reappropriated on a photograph’s aesthetic value. Evaluating photographs through another art’s normative standards without recognizing the nature of a photograph can lead to confusion which obfuscate correct judgment. Those who look, criticize, and extrapolate value from photographs using measurements from the aim of painting can be compared to pathfinders who use maps with a faulty compass. Concurrently, those who employ informed understanding when evaluating photographs gain an even deeper appreciation for them. Naturally, paintings that are made to imitate photographs present the least value and importance to the intellect and its virtues.

The immanence of the photograph provides the basis of its experience, and by extension, its meaning. Consider as an example, the portrait of Sharbat Gula for the June 1985 edition of National Geographic by Steve McCurry, and Johannes Vermeer’s painting of a Girl with a Pearl Earring. There are perhaps no other images in the world that are both equal in power, similar in many ways, yet stand in stark contrast against each other.

Sharbat Gula is the subject of McCurry’s famous Afghan Girl cover photo for National Geographic, and had been the subject of documentaries and news. Unconsciously or not, the popularity of her image is central to a typical 21st century photographer’s desire for fame and recognition. One might say that photographing something akin to her portrait and receiving recognition is the height of one’s success. Steve McCurry himself is highly recognized because of this photograph. But look at the photograph and gaze back into her piercing green eyes. These are eyes that demand answer to her situation, narrated by the tattered headscarf and smudges in her countenance. Her dark hair frames her illuminated face. These details, captured in a split second, already speaks of a story—her story in the world. Though there may be a cultic veneration of the photograph as an icon of Western political awakening, or even glamour, an honest viewing does not let one ignore her then situation in Nasir-Bagh. It is quite absurd then to fantasize and imagine the photograph to mean something other than what it is—its ontological characteristics prohibit it.

Now search for an image of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. In many ways, it is similar to McCurry’s photo: a single face illuminated against a background, a perspective including only the head and shoulder, a turn of the head that signals recognition of an intrusion—as if both girls suddenly came in contact with the viewer. Yet the gaze, powerful as it may be, pierces in a different way. The Girl with a Pearl Earring also asks questions about life, but not her life—it is our life that she is considering. Her questions seem to reflect a higher order, and her mysterious identity partly enhances this effect. She looks at us, as if she wants to know us, but we know nothing about her. The pearl earring is the only indication of her social status, but aside from that, every proposed fact about her can be contested. Taken as a whole, the beauty that emanates from this painting starts from the material realm but certainly does not end there. Left with no information about her personal identity, her connections, or the setting of the artwork, we the viewer are pushed to appreciate the painting beyond the realm of the material—to the world of forms, speculation, transient meaning. Anyone familiar with Vermeer’s work may find these conclusions about the painting’s transcendence highly ironic, being fully aware of Vermeer employing mechanical equipments and techniques to achieve the highest degree of realism—or materialism—in his paintings.

Take as another example, the portraits of President John F. Kennedy: The photograph from the White House website, and the official portrait painting made by Aaron Shikler. The photograph exhibits the typical image expected of a statesman: a dignified countenance, wrinkles in the face, a matter-of-fact photo without any alteration from the negative (or none that stand out). In any case, by looking at the photograph, one can see who President John F. Kennedy was on that specific day in the White House. In contrast, his official portrait painting points to something other than his typical image. Here we see the image of a thinking president that is not set in an apparent date or time—because it is not. It is a posthumous portrait which reveals a sense of melancholy befitting of his significance and tragedy. Both artifacts portray the late president and possess cultural significance, but their meaning and their functions are dissimilar by virtue of their ontological difference.

Conclusion

As it is with writing and the rest of the arts, photography needs to be an activity that edifies the mind and cultivates the intellect. In the same vein, good photographs can create transcendent and aesthetic experiences without fully abandoning their immanence. In fact, it is precisely their immanence that serves as a conduit of their transcendence. By drawing the boundaries of photography from the other visual arts through its ontological properties, our aesthetic sentiments are aided in separating the beautiful from the tasteless, the useful from the pathetic, and anything in between. While photographs may speak obvious things at first glance, their true meaning and value is revealed after one engages in ontological analysis. Recognizing the immanence of the photograph demystifies it and separates it from the other plastic and digital arts. It can be understood in its own category without conflating its appearance from the rest of imageries that flood human life in the 21st century.

References

American Psychological Association. “Speaking of Psychology: Why our attention spans are shrinking, with Gloria Mark, PhD.” February 2023, last accessed January 15, 2025. https://www.apa.org/news/podcasts/speaking-of-psychology/attention-spans.

Anderson, Janna and Rainie, Lee, “The Future of Human Agency,” February 24, 2023. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2023/02/24/the-future-of-human-agency/

Alberti, Leon Battista, “On Painting.” In Aesthetics: The Classic Readings, edited by David E. Cooper. Wiley Blackwell, 2019.

Bazin, André, “The Ontology of the Photographic Image.” In Classic Essays on Photography, edited by Alan Trachtenberg. Leete’s Island Books, 1980.

Benjamin, Walter, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” In Aesthetics: A Comprehensive Anthology, edited by Steven M. Cahn, Stephanie Ross, and Sandra Shapshay. Wiley Blackwell, 2020.

D’Aurizio, Sarah, “Are Attention Spans Actually Decreasing?,” The Center for Brain, Mind and Society, last accessed January 15, 2025. https://brainmindsociety.org/posts/are-attention-spans-actually-decreasing.

Leonardo Da Vinci, “Notebooks (Selections).” In Aesthetics: The Classic Readings, edited by David E. Cooper. Wiley Blackwell, 2019.

Shih-t’ao, “Quotes on Painting.” In Aesthetics: The Classic Readings, edited by David E. Cooper. Wiley Blackwell, 2019.

Walton, Kendall L., “Transparent Pictures: On the Nature of Photographic Realism.” In Aesthetics: A Comprehensive Anthology, edited by Steven M. Cahn, Stephanie Ross, and Sandra Shapshay. Wiley Blackwell, 2020.

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On the Immanence of the 21st Century Photograph