Have you ever spilled some sugar on a table and suddenly had an opinion of how the pile of granules should look? Maybe you've dragged your finger through it and made a line, then, unsatisfied with that, you've smoothed it out, perhaps drew a smiley face, or arranged in a curvilinear mini-sculpture? You seek to impose some sort of order upon the chaos of a random event, and usually this is done for your own satisfaction. Few people exclaim, "Look at this wonderful shape I made out of this pile of Splenda!"

You are getting in touch with your sense of beauty and interacting with it. You are exploring the effects of your aesthetic sense and through it you are making connections with the world.

Another way is through a camera lens; we "arrange" objects through perspective, "moving" some things in front of the other, "ordering" the world by our arrangement to it. This is also done through lighting, focus, and other techniques. Our will is the medium that delivers the art, that expresses a unique perspective, and this is why no two photos of the same scene look exactly alike.

Our minds look for order and our expressive selves organize things in a pleasing way but why? What is it about us that we must impose our will upon the world?

Within order is an appreciation for beauty. Beauty reassures us that there is some order in a seemingly random universe.

Pick up a leaf and within its veins, you will see the imprint of the tree from whence it came. The stars are arranged in constellations based merely on our terrestrial perspective. There are patterns and order all around us, and I'll leave it up to you whether it is intrinsic, projected there by our creative minds, or an expression of God's aesthetic.

Of course, no two people see or appreciate beauty in the same way. Perhaps, this dissonance is one of the reasons that art is so valuable; we are looking for clues towards understanding the differences in our perspectives and appreciating the uniqueness of our selves. Perhaps, we are taking on some role of the creator, trying to apprehend the nature of God.

I hope I answer some of these questions and raise others through my photos.

Our lives are questions... unanswered.

Timothy J. Steiner

Boston, MA

January 2008

All Images and Content copyright 2008 by Timothy J. Steiner