What do you need from a photograph? A memory of history, like the memorial stones at Bethel or Gilgal in the Old Testament? Perhaps you need a source of self esteem or a prompt of gratitude for your family. Our home is filled with photographs, dating from a family portrait in Ireland in 1903 to a landscape I took last Spring. What need, I wonder, do these photographs meet? What needs can the art of photography meet for you?
There was a man who profoundly influenced my understanding of art. There was not, for him, a division between sacred and secular music or painting or photography. For good art, he would say, expresses the presence, the beauty, and the love of God. Music, writing, photography, painting—any art is sacred if it gives expression to God’s creation as “very good” (Gen 1.)
That man was my father. His art was music; mine has included photography.
Dad taught me that we need reminders that our lives are the sacred work of God. Art can give us those sacramental reminders through music, visual art, maybe even the art of sport like a good curveball, a well designed football play, or the fluid poetry of a cutting horse.
We need these arts to remind us that we and our world come from God. We are the art of God. Our arts—music, visual art, writing—are attempts to reflect the “very good” of our lives.