Figure 1 – Texture on the surface of an urn. (c) DE Wolf 2018.

Figure 1 is not an “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Unlike John Keats’ urn, it does not reveal forms and figures frozen in beauty and time. Rather it is a study of the texture in a more modern vase. The IPhone camera is a perfect tool for this. The eye starts with the urn itself, but the camera draws us inward to a point, where rather than shape texture becomes predominant.

I love these little sojourns of vision. It is the magic of the photograph, where a simple, perhaps inconsequential, object in a store window reveals an inner beauty at a more intimate level. It reminds me of a Japanese Garden, where beauty functions on all levels, much like fractals are random walks regardless of scale.

In Keat’s words, themselves made timeless by the passage of time: