This Week in Art

The photo to the right was taken during July 2009 at Glacier Point, in Yosemite National Park. It has quickly became an internet sensation, spreading through photo sharing sites such as facebook. Its reception within the art community has been varied, marked by controversy almost as often as by admiration.

What is so charming about this piece is that the artist has dared to depart from the norm. He has chosen a subject that is as profoundly unique as it is perplexing and mundane. One can almost picture him, scrambling about shoeless on the rocks, in search of the most appropriate angle from which to capture this fine specimen of footwear.

The results are worthy of the effort. Critics may reduce the portrait to folly (a mere advertisement at best), but others will find more. See how the grays and blues of the shoe blend with the soft tones of the rocky valley. It is almost as if the colors of the shoe are brought alive by the park, in a joyful reminder that man and nature harmoniously coexist. There is, also, a protagonist. The imposing Half Dome peak is fuzzy, yet undeniably ruling the horizon. The mountain is issuing its ever-present challenge: Climb if you dare! With that challenge, it all comes back to the shoe, which likewise dares the viewer to expand his own horizons about what attributes make art truly valuable.

When a person brings a camera to a place like Glacier Point, it is most often put to use for portraits of friends. Those who wish to be photographed here must suppose that the dramatic backdrop of Yosemite's famous vista will be something that they can one day point to, as proof that their lives have been lived well - that they have seen many distant and marvelous sites. Others make an attempt to capture the overwhelming natural beauty of the location. They take careful aim toward the breathtaking cliffs, squinting with determination into the mass-produced view finders of their $200 point-and-shoots (the kind they bought after they saw Ashton Kutcher present it on television). It is as if, for the moment, they are pretending that this landscape has never before been preserved upon canvas. It is up to them, at least in their minds, to bring this view to the eyes of the world less traveled.

Consider, for a moment, how many photos there must be of Glacier Point. Are they not all, hundreds and hundreds of them, these same two sorts of images? If one must cry "folly", then please level your charge towards one amongst these masses, for surely another will immediately rush to take his place, clamoring, as they do, always to the same cliched vantage points.

Do not follow the way of the impudent grizzly bear, who chooses to dine on the lone salmon found swimming with the current (in the opposite direction of all the other salmons). Instead, make a choice to nurture a solitary pumpkin vine, should you be so lucky as to discover one growing in a field of zucchinis.