Thoughts: buildings give form to space (interior and exterior). They make of empty space something concrete. They’re also useful, like decorated tools and vessels. “Ugly” and “beautiful” are a disease of the mind. “When love and hate are both absent, everything becomes clear and undisguised.” (– Seng-ts’an)

I don’t know if I’d call them a disease! But yes, false or subjective perceptions, for sure. Ones I rely on though, as the play between my own competing perceptions is often what brings about the taking of a photo (i.e. can I find a “beautiful” composition of an “ugly” building).

When we lable something “ugly” (or “beautiful”) most of us tend to stop seeing the thing, and begin to defend the label. Do you feel, as an artist, that’s not how it works? When you make your “beautiful” composition, is no credit due the building? Your composition is simply a persepctive, and in it the buiding is no longer “ugly,” is it? Put another way: “beauty” and “ugliness” exist in the mind, not in things. To the extent such labels interfere with seeing, they’re a disease.

“… ‘beauty’ and ‘ugliness’ exist in the mind, not in things.” Agreed. As for the process or how it works, I can’t speak for anyone else, but I don’t make any effort to divorce myself from possible preconceived notions of beauty when I’m shooting. It’s generally not an intellectual process (it is intellectual when editing an image later for color, cropping, contrast, etc).

As for credit, the list is infinite! There’s no photo without the building, those who designed it, those who built it, the engineers who developed the iPhone on which I took the picture, the software makers who developed the specific application I used on my iPhone, the clouds, the sky, and on an on…