Last year, while loitering in an apartment to which I’d just been granted admittance, I noticed affixed to a closet door a thin, glossy sheet of paper–a page from a magazine, removed neatly and elevated in status to an artifact more deserving of one’s attention than the other pages left behind. On the page was not an article, but a photograph. This photograph:

It, as well as any creative work similarly transfixing, challenges the role of subjectivity in the determination of what is or is not art. The personification of universal aesthetic inhabits the image perpetually.

The print’s title and its photographer were given, and these I retained for later retrieval. My conviction that a supernatural quality permeates the photo was supported when I learned that the photographer favors this one over all others he’s taken. In fact, he was recently interviewed by Lisa Mullins on PRI’s The World for the express purpose of spreading word of his desire to reconnect with the portrait’s subject. Listening to the archived copy, I managed to ignore the arrogantly self-serving aspect of his rendering the radio segment a personal soapbox, and the interview was progressing in a manner typical of Mullins’ interactions with her artist guests–playfully earnest, if insubstantial. Then he made an offhand, inflammatory remark that betrayed his stupidity, which is circularly ironic, given what he uttered.

Bewildered and dismayed, I wondered whether recognizing the photographer as an imbecile would diminish my appreciation of this photo. Weeks passed and I regarded it again, transfixed as ever. The explanation I’ve settled on is what I referred to earlier. The personification of universal aesthetic is an entity independent of the artist, and what sculptures, paintings, prints, etc. it inhabits, marginally or completely, is solely a matter of its discretion.