Nothing to do About Photography...

...BUT PERHAPS AN inspiration to those seriously interested in the art of photography. Take a look at The Textile Blog: Design, Decoration and Craft.

Textiles and photographs are both flat, basically two-dimensional art forms. Both are typically made by machines and are usually not hand-made, although there is much artistry in both mediums. Certainly there is something for a photographer to learn about composition and art from examining other, similar art forms.

We live in an age of increased specialization, rationalization of labor, narrow job categories, hair-splitting definitions of genres, and narrow disciplines that do not understand each other. Now, some can call this individuality, but this division perversely leads to centralization, excess standardization, and the sense that we are seen as easily-replacable cogs in a huge machine, and not as free men and women.

For this reason, I think that a good education in the liberal arts is important if you want to improve your art, as well as avoiding too much specialization in art. The Textile Blog seems to understand this, and features artists who were much more and broader in scope in their artwork than what we tend see these days.