I need to take a break from this place for awhile and so I just wanted to leave you all with a couple thoughts before that.
It would seem to me that the main usefullness of various forms of art is in it's ability to remove us from, or put in context the difficulties, of dealing with one another. The immediate forms of art which we may enjoy as a group attune the mass of us to one thing, allow us to to focus as a group on an immediacy is our pressence, removing us from the various things we place between ourselves. The concrete forms of art allow us to look at ourselves whitout having to engage in what is presented in that moment. So we can learn more easily about ourselves since when we are forced to engage in what is happening it skews our perception of the event. There is the saying about literature that when one writes one should create characters about whom the reader can care. Care yes, but the very power of these characters is their ability to present a moment which we may judge and see without the complications of being a part of that moment. Photournalism gets great power form this dynamic.
