Martin Fraser Lewis

Fine Art Photography

Wabi-Sabi is an aesthetic philosophy rooted in Zen Buddhism that is sometimes summarized as “finding beauty in imperfection, profundity in nature and of accepting the natural cycle of growth, decay and death”.  Leonard Koren, a well-known writer on wabi-sabi adopted a definition as “the beauty of things imperfect, impermanent and incomplete, the antithesis of our classical Western notion of beauty as something perfect, enduring and monumental”.  Another writer on the subject, Richard Powell, says that “wabi-sabi nurtures all that is authentic by acknowledging three simple realities: nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect”.  This last definition is the one that for me represents the closest application of the wabi-sabi concept in my photography. 

The two words, wabi and sabi have long and divergent histories of usage.  The most recent connotations of the words are, for “wabi”, harmony, peace, tranquility, balance, simplicity, freshness or quietness, and includes the concept of quirks and anomalies that add uniqueness and elegance to an object; and for “sabi”, the notion of beauty and serenity that comes with age, or the bloom of time.  Sabi encompasses the sense that beauty is fleeting.  Less its earlier definition of desolation and sadness, more the taking pleasure in things that grow old and fade.  In wabi-sabi we see the wisdom of simplicity and the reality of flawed beauty.

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