Hello. My name is [Academian], and I'm a...

Flickrholic.

Kansasgirl introduced me to this fabulous website showcasing excellent photography, and since, on an almost daily basis, I browse through some of the photographs posted and ranked as the most interesting on the site. Some are good. Some are a little on the silly side. Some showcase things that I might not otherwise believe, like a set of a student in California who has tamed a large number of squirrels on his campus. Occasionally, though, I find ones that epitomize what the art-form seems to be about to me.

Photography is a way to capture some aspect of reality and transmit it to an outside observer, just as in most other art forms. A photographer has a harder time of it, though, than does a painter, because a painter can create any particular scene as suits her whim to depict content like emotions or abstract concepts. A photographer must work with physical objects to achieve the same effects.

Well, I've come across a photographer whose work I find enchanting. I have to admit that I've developed a little bit of a crush on this Polish woman (her name is Agnieszka) whom I've never met simply because I enjoy her work so much. A large part of her corpus of work involves self-portraits, and I can't hide the fact that she is gorgeous. The cynical side of my mind tells me that this must be the real underlying reason why I love her works so much, but I'd rather try to seem at least a little less shallow than that.

While she is very beautiful, what strikes me about her isn't the shape of her eyes, the curve of her neck, or the way her hair falls across her temples. Rather, I find her beautiful because of the expressive quality of her photographs. She seems to photograph herself as a way to illustrate moods, ranging from quite dark moods to ennui to contentment to triumph. The dark ones are good, but I favor the more playful ones, like these:

1, 2, 3, 4.

I love it.

Thanks Kansasgirl, and thanks Agnieszka.