We don’t love things because they are perfect, we love them because they are not

I was recently having a brief discussion with someone on Mastodon about photography and it got me thinking. If you think about all the things in your life you can say you love, you will be able to find fault in all of them, probably many. Whether it is the people around us, the things we surround ourselves with or the art we enjoy, the flaws are what separates them from everything else.

This discussion immediately made me think of a photograph by Alfred Stieglitz, which was taken in the winter of 1892 on 5th Avenue, New York. It shows a horse and carriage in a whiteout. Note, it's not the one featured above (for copyright reasons), that's mine from a few years ago shot on a relatively modern Nikon F80 and Ilford XP2 film.

You can faintly make out the buildings in the background, even the subject is quite faint. Snow obscures nearly everything. It is ’technically’ imperfect, but I love it. I’ve loved it from the first moment I saw it, because it has an atmosphere and a grittiness that speaks to my soul. It is all the better for being captured on a more primitive medium (old, old film and old, old lenses).

There’s a reason why people love poorly recorded music; why some of the songs that have stood the test of time have done so despite their imperfections --I’m thinking Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven which famously speeds up and slows down across its runtime; why people love Leica’s rangefinders even though they don’t have some of the modern trappings of today’s cameras; why the people in your life who’ve been through some shit are the ones you could spend all day listening to.

We all have our imperfections; our scars and the things that make us unique. I don’t think it is surprising that we are often drawn to the imperfections in others, or in the things we enjoy.

Reality isn’t perfect; our memories are unreliable, yet we cause ourselves a lot of heartache and insecurity pursuing what we (or more recently, machines) consider perfection.

Wear your scars with pride. Listen to music that moves you. Love art that is flawed. Be your own unique human self and embrace the imperfections that separate you from the machines and the cold, dead slop they create.

I’m on Mastodon