The Perception of Beauty
Huanghuacheng, China
2016
It’s not just what you see but also what you know that determines whether a scene appears attractive or not. If I told you this was a photo of fog in the mountains, you might say “how beautiful.” If I told you the truth, that it is smog, you’d likely have a much more negative reaction. Context is everything.
You are right about the difference in how I would view this if it were fog. Right now, I’m holding my breath.
Have you seen this article about China’s smog?
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/01/03/508013041/watch-time-lapse-video-shows-wall-of-smog-in-china
I tried holding my breath. Couldn’t quite keep it up for ten days though. 🙂 We saw smog move in pretty fast. Fast enough that looking out the window one minute showed pretty clear skies and a bit later, dense smog. I don’t think we saw anything move in as fast as the 20 minutes shown in the npr video though. The only thing good about that is it can move out just as fast if it gets a mind to.