Before beginning this project I had little to no insight on what it meant to study philosophy through a creative lens. The areas of philosophy I first looked into brought questions about human nature, ethics, and the nature of reality, questions that are essential to areas of philosophy like metaphysics, value theory, and Ontology. Trying to understand and analyze these ideas from a creative perspective was not something I could do given the complexity of what I was learning. I immediately turned to history to give me a second layer of understanding knowing that learning about the history of philosophy and global philosophical thinking would give me the background I needed to apply my contemporary knowledge to. A great part of this research into the history of philosophical thinking had to do with divinity and religion which played an enormous role in the lives of many famous philosophers. Introducing religion into philosophy allowed me to contrast, compare, and analyze what I was learning because I’ve already formed strong opinions about religion. Using this tactic, I learned the philosophies of Descartes, who bore the idea of radical skepticism, Anslem of Canterbury, who attempted to prove the existence of God as a necessary being, and Aquinas, who introduced the cosmological argument which to my surprise sounded awfully like Issac Newton if he was a theologian. I learned that the question of the divine is one that inspired some of the most influential philosophers in our history. But it was still unclear to me why they continued to worship the divine once others proved their theory wrong. Of course there are many reasons why people continue to believe in their Gods today, but it wasn’t until I reached the readings of Plato and Aristotle that I understood where beauty came in. At some point in my book the authors mentioned a shift in philosophical perspectives from constructive and metaphysical to logical and theological, which is where much of the previously mentioned work was born. This was a time where art became a simple adornment for the temple of God as beauty was now seen as the work of God. Beauty was such a powerful thing for these people that they decided the beautiful must be the work of God because no human would be able to create something beautiful but only recreate the beautiful. From this the ideas of imitation in art were introduced, which was the first time I could really apply my learnings to photography as photography is nearly the definition of imitation. My approach to photography has always been open and I’ve operated under the idea that I usually take pictures of things that catch my eye or seem interesting. This is me playing into the empiricist approach which is the belief that sense-experience, or in this case seeing, is the most reliable source of information. Though my photography doesn’t solely focus on the reliability of the photograph, my photographs become a mark of something I believe to be beautiful or at least worth looking at and perhaps even moving in an emotional sense. The ideas of imitation in the divine sense make my work seem a lot less special because it’s almost like I’m plagiarizing the beautiful work of the divine. I had issues understanding how I could make my work worthwhile until I understood that St.Augustine’s work provided an explanation and justification for human art and the longing for the beautiful. This new idea makes it easier to justify the photos I take as long as I was able to capture the beauty I was “longing for”. As long as I abstained from taking morally faulty photos, my art could now be considered among the beautiful. I also learned in this approach a very important idea that I’ll quote from the introduction of my book: “All that man creates as art is valuable so long as it symbolizes truth, but truth can be gained through what pleases in sight because the beautiful inspires love and the aspiration of love is, if guided by faith, toward the truth” (Philosophies of Art and Beauty, Hofstadter and Kuhns). Minus the faith part, this explanation for the love of beauty and justification for lust provides a reason for why I create art and why it’s valuable, as long as it’s truthful. I tested this theory out for myself when I went to take pictures around the lower east side, a neighborhood riddled with poverty and homeless people. One might think that taking pictures of human suffering could be immoral but I prefer my pictures to be emotional and inspiring. If it hurts one to see another one suffering then the answer should be simple and we should all strive not to suffer for the sake of our own emotional stability. Of course it’s not that easy in this day and age but I still believe my work could be used for awareness, no matter how tragic it may be because tragedy implies emotion and emotions are powerful.