I've never felt compelled to make a journal entry on deviantart before until now. I had an epiphany about an hour ago, and now it has me rather troubled, and maybe there's something that can be done about it, so here I am, telling anybody who happens to read this.

Today, as I was perusing the photography on diviantart like I always do I stumbled across a picture. This picture in fact. [link]

I was truly captivated by it's beauty, it's simplicity. I couldn't put my finger on why I found it so enthralling until I realized that it was the truth of it that make it so great. Truth is what makes art, well, art. Truth equals beauty. If you ever stopped to notice that the moments in your life that were truly beautiful were the moments filled with truth, such as you were true to yourself, to those around, having a true experience. Not something forced or posed, or really planned. But that's not the true epiphany I had. No the true epiphany was on a smaller scale in a sense but in a larger one in another, and one of great sorrow.

Deviantart isn't what I remember it being. Looking through the comments of Stranger 53 I noticed there was a recurring theme, one about how this photograph was true art, something not seen much around lately. And it's true. Simply go to the people and portraits category and all there is are girls, most of which are nude. Now, I'm a straight guy...I like girls. Girls are great. Nude girls are great! But almost none possessed that captivating quality Stranger 53 had. Most of them were rather crude, and had little art quality to them. Now, I'm not bashing the artists or the models, as their photographs all have their place. I love artistic nude female photographs because I believe that the female form is truly flawless...but after seeing so many stick thing, "sexy" girls, I realized how boring it was. And how few "artistic" photos I was really finding.

The sad thing is, I don't really remember it being this way. I've been a member of deviantart for a few years now, and I remember when I first join that when I'd go to the people and portraits category there were very few nudes, and that the vast majority were spontaneous, emotional portraits of all kinds of people. Men, woman, children, old, young. And that the few nudes there were, were truly beautiful and highly artistic.

Makes you wonder what happened? What happened to the truth?

I'd like to issue a challenge to all the artist here and everywhere else, to make it your mission to search for truth in your art, and not just succumb to the digital age of "I can take 200 pictures without having to worry about it costing me money!". After all, isn't that what art is suppose to be about? The search for truth? The search for beauty that's out of the ordinary?