Ridge

Wabi Sabi is the dominant Japanese aesthetic, epitomised in the rustic elegance of the tea ceremony. As a concept, it's rather too diffuse for me, but I like its evocation of age without sadness, and elegance without perfection.

I glimpse something of it when the bemaddenned, flawed King Lear grasps his sanity and asserts that he is, "Aye, every inch a king": beautiful, matured, positive. Likewise, Milan Kundera in the novel "Immortality" muses on the coy gesture of an aged beauty in which one glimpses the eternal nucleus of character that had ever lived in that woman. It's something transcendent, but very real also.

What this means photographically, I have no idea, but of all my images, this advertising image for Schmap is one that I think comes closest: