Beauty of Happenstance

The picture below is a photograph of my Great Grandfather, Elwood B. Allred.

 

 

     Art. The beauty of art we all too many times take for something conscious and intended. I do not think this to be the case at all. Art is not always intentional, indeed much of art is the beauty of coincidence, the beauty of true character shown.

     This is one of those examples. I have heard many stories of the man pictured above. He gave a lot of service to his community and his family. He was a faithful husband, son, and father, even when it was extremely difficult and taxing. He too suffered from depression, but he did not let that get him. He refused.

     That is why I like this picture so much. It is beautiful because it shows his character, with flaws, but also with determination. He is on the trail up on a mountain somewhere in Idaho. First, the surroundings show the trail is a little upward, and curves out of sight. Though there is not much snow on the ground, there is on the mountains, meaning that the beautiful Idaho chill is still going on. His heavier clothing also testifies to that. The sky seems to be clouded and overcast, and that combined with the robust beauty of the mountains seems to testify of the struggles of his life- he had some difficult mountains to climb, and not always in the fair weather.

     Now to him. His posture seems to be a combination of a disciplined worker combined with a sense of melancholy. His gun is not a sign of violence, but rather freedom, as this was a time where guns where not taboo.His hat is tilted down as the style of the era he grew up in, a possible testament to sentimentality I suppose. His boots and clothes seemed well taken care of, despite the miles they have weathered. He cared about how he looked, not as a sense of pride, but because he may have been a little haunted by his imperfections, and wanted to present himself the best he could despite them.

     The most beautiful thing of this picture though is his face. It seems tired, though determined. He is older it looks like, and though he pleads for his trials to leave, he seems to be resolute to have to deal with them. It is a kind of balance that is too often tipped from one extreme to the other. I really like the way the whole photograph seems to flow around him, yet without sacrificing the rugged beauty of the landscape. I cannot pretend to know what makes a good photograph a good photograph except that it presents... humanity. To me, it is something that just seems to resonate with ourselves, something that seems true or profound to us, whether consciously or not.