I was watching the artist Sarah Sze on Art 21. Her work is magnificent and delicate and also profound. In one of her sculptural installation pieces, she used torn bits of printed photographs distributed throughout the piece, in space. In the video she talked about how many photographs we have on this planet and how they have become like detritus. Some people have a great nostalgia for the old days when photographs were “special”(because so few people could afford to make them. ps: guess who those people were). I happen to believe that the people making photographic images these days come from broader, global backgrounds and that this is good, more informative and more democratic. I think we have to shift our expectation that the rare (elite) holds all the value, and realize that there are many things that are numerous, beautiful and essential - our microbes, tiny little nano particles of sand (watch Gary Greenburg’s talk on this) the insects in the air and the ground that we need and kill. One thing I love about Sze’s work is how she makes large beautiful works out of small, seemingly insignificant pieces. All that said, there certainly is a lot of stuff in this world. If we can find the beauty in the smaller things, maybe we can detox from needing so many larger, louder, landfilling new things?