I’m looking at this picture, and having some inchoate thoughts about photography.

That perhaps its peculiar appeal and also its danger are about the fact that it makes composition invisible. I think you could make the somewhat dumbed-down analogy of the present:photography::the past:painting, and all that would remain to be explicated is the single colon—that is, what’s the relationship between an age and its primary visual art form? Is there any kind of social mimeticism there? Again, this isn’t an actual argument, or even really a fully fleshed-out thought, but what if the thing about photography is the way in which it looks ineffably right and real when it’s well-done? Think about the way photographs have become iconic, have condensed social moments and international events (not to mention landscapes and movie actresses and so on) and given them a sense of immediate coherence. A crystallization, a self-evidence. Think about our highly contemporary concerns about a narcissistic generation, hooked on self-presentation: YouTube and Facebook and reality TV. Might the connection be in something to do with the gaze? Being worthy of the gaze? Being shored up, ordered, and underscored, but in a way that erases its own artifice? Invisibly but powerfully framed?

You know, just a thought.