The Mindful Photographer

Embrace Paradox

Fissure #8, Kilaeau Volcano, Hawai‘i, 2018, Leslie Gleim

Photography and art place us in front of some of the great, unanswerable questions of existence—and then reflect our reply. Who am I? What is the nature of our lives individually and collectively? Both irony and paradox address, though differently, the contradictory dynamics at the heart of most phenomena, that all things hold opposing tendencies and conflicting aspects that are often impervious to casual observation and cannot be explained and represented through shallow thinking.

While irony, in art and photography, refers to the difference between appearances and content, ...