I seem to always disagree with Mark Hobson over at The Landscapist, but whatever our philosophical differences may be, and it is often difficult for me to tell if they are differences of semantics or substance, I always find myself thinking about the ideas he presents. I suppose that's the best compliment you can pay to a blog. Suffice it to say that most of my disagreement with him comes down to the time-worn argument about the relativity of truth. (And there's his imprecise use of the term romanticism, but that's for a different day). I'm not going to write much—to do otherwise would require most of my day as I rummage through my library in search of the perfect WIttgenstein quote to cover my flank. Instead, I want to look at two photographs of the same subject, shot on the the same day, by the same photographer, but from two contrasting points of view. The above photo shows team-roping from the point of view of a fan or a participant. It's the kind of image you might find in a magazine devoted to the sport. It captures the skill of the rider, the power and poise of the horse, and the precision required to perform well in this sport. All of these things are true about this event. It is a difficult sport; this particular horse is extraordinarily athletic; this is exciting to watch.

This photo, however, is almost the opposite view. The healer's horse and rider are incidental and don't appear to be moving quickly at all. This photograph draws attention to the violent snap of the rope as the header horse pulls sharply to left yanking the steer by the neck. I've also chosen a different treatment in presenting the photo by allowing the darker tones to prevail and removing the color. Everything in this photo is 'true' as well. The steers do get yanked around; the men with well trained horses and ropes have an enormous advantage over them. (To be fair, at the end of the day they seem none the worse for wear)

Did one of these photos aim at 'being true?' Have I captured 'the real' in one and not the other? To frame the question like this muddies the waters where criticism should, in general, try to clear them. This is what drive me crazy about artist statements—they so often take a simple idea and, in the attempt to add profundity, make it complicated. We can avoid the confusion by simply acknowledging the possibility of competing points of view and not worry about which, if either, represents the true world. This is not to say that discussions of empiricism, materialism, idealism, or any other study of ontology aren't interesting, only that they are not particularly useful when deciding if an artist is worth your time and to use a term like 'true' in a vague manner is particularly unhelpful.