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Paulo Valdivia
Paulo is a landscape photographer based in Chile. His images explore the intersection between the human condition, subjective reality and the environment.
It has never been easy to understand and define “beauty”. Throughout history Philosophy, Art and Aesthetics have provided to us with multiple understandings of the term. Beauty is inherently perceptual, complex and subjective by nature. Out the wide of range of definitions I quite like one from the philosopher George Santayana for its simplicity, in which he emphasizes that “beauty, is not a perception of a matter of fact; it is an emotion; an affection of our volitional and appreciative nature”. Although the intent of this essay lies far from engaging in a dense philosophical and semantical discussion on the concept of beauty in art, I introduced the above definition as a way to connect with the essence of this essay. Thus, in the following paragraphs, I will try to explain and share my learning experience of embracing a different (and difficult) approach to nature/landscape photography: to evaluate whether I can emotionally connect with “green” urban or semi-urban spaces and make images that can reflect that experience. Furthermore, the idea of this essay is to encourage the community of OnLandscape to share their own experiences or unique visions on this topic.
