The Beauty of Fading Light

Why do I find dawn and dusk beautiful? During the brightest hours of the day, I’m hardly aware of the light. In my youth, death was an abstract concept I could casually dismiss. Life, too, therefore, was only an idea, not something I could see or feel. Everything fades in and eventually fades out. The middle is somehow lacking in self-awareness.

The same holds for the year; we are hardly aware of it in the spring and summer. We reflect back on it towards the end and visualize a happy year at the beginning.

On the last day of the year, I took a walk around my mother’s home in the twilight. I spent parts of my middle school and high school years in this area. My father died about a year ago. Once my mother is gone, I will have no reason to come here. Nobody will remember who I am. What I remember of this area will gradually change and, therefore, fade even if my memories do not. I do not see nostalgia in the old signs and buildings, but my future that will eventually fade.

When my father died, he had few friends left to remember him. Even if he were famous, it would only be a matter of time; eventually, everyone fades away. I’m not sure if it’s much of a consolation to fade slower.

Perhaps perceiving beauty always requires stepping outside of the frame. When we are of it, we can’t even see the frame. As we move towards the edges of the frame, we see a glimpse of the outside looking in.

In this sense, photography is the purest form of art, as it consists only of framing. We are unable to see the beauty of what we experience unless we deliberately frame it.

Even tragedy, suffering, and death momentarily look beautiful through a disinterested gaze of framing. Artists must operate like war photographers, always stepping back from the fear, joy, and anger to frame them.

But even if we are not artists, we risk sleepwalking through life if we do not step back from life every now and then. Objectively speaking, the fact that today is the last day of the year is arbitrary and meaningless, but there are no intrinsic frames in the light we perceive, either. Photographers frame it arbitrarily in order to see the beauty in it.