A selection of photos from my iPhone library that satisfy the demands of postmodernistic meta-narrative as well as those of "classical" Kantian aesthetics. In other words, they "say" something contemporary art'ish (juxtaposing the artificial with the natural and/or text with image, suggesting sociopolitics, etc) but still look nice as photos (in my opinion).
Here we have a beautiful sunrise with post apocalyptic Blade Runner-esque techno-wires in the foreground, juxtaposing nature and technology. Sunrises like these are actually rare -- usually you don't get that fire as the clouds have to be just right, so I'm glad I took this picture.
Vegetables on a cutting board; biological material, chopped into pieces by manufactured steel -- a knife, one of humankind's first inventions, for use as FOOD. Food! Ah the meaning of food...
This was originally "German Auto Works," but I framed it so it says MAN WERKS -- a comment on gender. Many or most photos have some nature and some MAN-made stuff in them so in a way claiming that as postmodern sophistication is kind of cheating, and kind of a trite observation. Here you have a sign framed by a tree and a fence, raindrops on the windshield, and image plus text, so it scores many points.
My laptop and nightstand. I like the angles here, and the light. There's nothing really postmodernistic except that it's just kind of unclear what the narrative is. I suppose there's text on the screen but you can't read it; maybe that's meaningful in and of itself.
Here we have the usual nature and human-made juxtaposition, and also "COMMERCE" jumping right out at you, so you are made to consider capitalism. "ANIMAL SHELTER" carries all kinds of potential meaning for a participant in western culture to tease out. "SOLAR HUT" -- environmentalism. I don't know about "EXTREME TOWING."
The solar eclipse back in 2018 or 2019 in California. All those circular light-and-shadow shapes you see are repeated images of the moon obscuring the sun; that curved crescent is a sliver of the sun peeking out from behind the moon, and you get multiple images like that when an eclipse filters down through tree leaves functioning as multiple apertures. And, it's all projected onto the pavement! Even though eclipses are nature, they are weird nature; plus we enjoy the odd phenomenon on earth right now where the sun and the moon appear to be exactly the same size, allowing for perfect solar eclipses.
Taken in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, which could be kind of an ironic thing like the Garden of Eden, but it's like, you know, suburban technological human-madeness encroaching on nature as opposed to paradise (or, perhaps a NEW paradise). The big water tank has a print of some pond reeds on it which is simulacrum, and then you're viewing it all through some powerlines. ARTTTT!!!!!
Taken at the playground of the church I sometimes attend. It enjoys a (both theologically and politically) liberal, social justice seeking, LGBT-oriented congregation and I thought it was ironic that they have a CRUSADER FENCE.
My reflection in my bedroom window; I was about to go hiking at dawn. You can see the sky shining through between the trees, and then below them there's no light so you get the reflection of me and my room. So, yes: mirror reflection, the real and the unreal, nature and manmade, through a glass darkly...all this kind of postmodernistic stuff...sort-of...kind-of...discourse.
This one's almost too pomo for its own good -- and by that I mean, sort of a smirking hipster obviousness: like "HA-ha, I'm going to take a pic of some chicken wings on the street and be shocking and countercultural at my community college fine art program." YMMV.
This is my head. I noticed on a selfie taken at Starbucks that the sunlight was shining through my hair and making it blue and translucent, so I made this phenom into an extreme close-up.
This is a squashed moth on the face of a plastic bucket that used to be in my garage. I'm glad I captured it on disk because I think the moth and/or the bucket has since disintegrated, been put somewhere else, or thrown away. It's like a fossil, but on plastic.