∴The Risk of Beauty∴
Today I want to step aside a bit and point you in the direction of some truly moving writing. Joanna Pocock’s thoughtful piece on W. Eugene and Aileen M. Smith’s photos1 of a poisoned Japanese village snapped up my attention as soon as I started it. The article strikes like lightning.
There is a moment in my life that marks a split between a ‘before’ and an ‘after’. I was around 12 years old, sitting cross-legged on the cream carpet in my family’s living room in Ottawa when I opened a large, heavy book, awkward in my skinny arms. The texture of the paper was strange: it was matt, a word I didn’t know then. The ink was blacker than anything I had seen. A pure void – no light, no reflection, nothing. My fingers left small shiny traces on the paper, which took a few seconds to disappear. My child’s mind could not understand what it was seeing.
The Risk of Beauty, as the piece is called, weaves together photojournalism and art history with ideas of environmentalism and innocence. It does so with clarity and care. A lot of us came to Substack hoping to find the kind of insightful writing that helps us make sense of the world. This article is it.
Cheers,
Chris.