What is Beauty?

During one of the first Photography lectures, the concept of beauty was questioned. Why do humans perceive some images as beautiful, and others not?   One of the images shown was the painting “The Hay Wain” by John Constable.

The Hay Wain John Constable 1821

The reason I believe this image is shown to be “beautiful” is because it is a snapshot of nature. Denis Dutton, a Philosopher of art, states in a TED talk “People in very different cultures all over the world tend to like a particular kind of landscape, a landscape that just happens to be similar to the pleistocene savannas where we evolved”. Essentially, we find nature beautiful due to certain aspects of the setting. Looking at “The Hay Wain”, for example, a flowing river is a water source and food source, a forest shelter and resources.

Secondly, since the image is hand-painted, some may understand how difficult and time-consuming it is to paint an image of this calibre. Another image of Constables’ that shows nature and humanity working synonymously is “Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows”

  Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows John Constable 1831

I have taken inspiration from these two images, and have taken two of my own replicating the wide shots showing nature and human settlement, shown below.

I firstly added a brighter filter to the image, to make the sky seem brighter and to let the church contrast against the foreground. This image shares many similarities with Constables’ image, yet my image is digital and Constables was hand painted. Some key differences are that Constable’s picture has a larger colour palette, and was set at a different time of day than to my image. My image is also a low angle shot, instead of a long shot. This shot is much better at conveying the scale and beauty of a church, as a low angle makes it seem almost as if the church is reaching up towards the sky, or heaven. A long shot shows more the contrast between the nature and the church, which while it is beautiful, I do not believe it is as captivating.