Seeing Beyond the Shutter

By Isaac Mei • Jun 7 2025 • 4 min read

Photo and my Drawing of the Brenta Cutting Through Bassano del Grappa from the POV of Ponte Vecchio

Houses peer over the Brenta, as the river flows peacefully away from the bridge. Porches and large bushes reach out for the water, longing for a drink from the shimmering river. The perfectly white clouds make way like curtains for the baby blue sky to stretch itself open in front of its audience, revealing the beauty that has been anticipated since the night.

There is no urgency here in this valley, only quiet confidence that is cutting the city of Bassano in half. Beauty isn’t announced in the town, it creeps in like dust on a bookshelf. As the light settles on the terracotta and dances across the folds of the river, one is reminded of the spectacle that emerges when nature is allowed to speak uninterrupted.

The mountains approach slowly out of the background, like a memory being recalled from dormancy. They’ve earned the attention that the sun is giving them - the leaves of the trees bask in the beams that stroke each branch, like a mother brushing her child’s hair from their face. The peaks offer reassurance - an anchor to the town that doesn’t enclose it, but gives it comfort like a father embracing his child.

- My Word Painting of the Brenta Cutting through Bassano del Grappa, technique based on on de Botton’s "On Possessing Beauty"

Doing this exercise taught me to resist the instinct to simply capture the beauty and instead dwell in it. I remember going to Horseshoe Canyon when I was in middle school, and telling my dad that I could've just looked at pictures on the internet and called it a day instead of driving in the blazing desert for hours. As someone who comes from a pretty technologically educated family, this has been my mindset since I was a child. Taking the photograph of the Brenta on the Ponte Vecchio in Bassano del Grappa was easy, but trying to describe it, draw it, and truly see it was much harder. Alain de Botton warns that "technology may make it easier to reach beauty, but it does not simplify the process of possessing or appreciating it" (219). In many ways, the tools we have created to make life more efficient and make beauty more accessible have made it less impactful. I have seen so many images of curated beauty on social media, and I have seen advanced cameras and Photoshop add details to make photos look more than realistic, but I haven't understood them like I have when I was forced to sit down. The process of writing and drawing slowed me down enough to notice things that I would never notice normally.

I began to see the differences between glancing and observing. When I tried to put into effect what de Botton emphasizes when he defines possession by stating that "true possession of a scene is a matter of making a conscious effort to notice elements and understand their construction", I realized that what I had to account for when observing went up by multitudes (220). When I drew a scene, however clumsily, I had to consider the curves of the rooftops, the texture of the waters, the layers of clouds, and the perspective of the clouds and the trees. I could've captured these elements instantly with a camera, but I would've never seen what I began to engage with without translating the act to my hands and creativity.

I was forced to realize how superficial my perception had been. Drawing showed me my "previous blindness to the true appearance of things," and I had realized that my way of seeing was just enough to register and move on, rather than to truly possess and notice (de Botton, 222). Writing the word painting forced me into a different kind of seeing, not just through the eyes, but also through full embodied attention to my surroundings.

Going back to my use of my phone, I realized that my upbringing totally defined my perception of how to see. As Robert S. Nelson explains, "visuality... [is] socially constructed," shaped by the "effects, contexts, values, and intentions" of culture (2). What I thought was natural and normal - scrolling, snapping, saving - was completely learned. I had to break the habits that had been inherently built into my system to actually look. I was finally participating, not just looking for something to post or brag about. I have done many checkups and have used glasses and contacts in my eyes to correct my vision, but none of that corrected how I see. I was artificially optically perfect, but perceptually shallow. I had a cultural and habitual physiological filter.

What de Botton and Nelson show is that beauty is not passively received, but created through narrative and attention. In a postmodern world that doesn't care much about presence anymore, that kind of attention isn't the norm anymore. However, by slowing down, observing, and attempting to draw and describe with word painting, I briefly stepped outside of the world I have been swallowed into. I earned the memories that I created.