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. 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…