Photography implies that we know about the world if we accept it as the camera records it. But this is the opposite of understanding, which starts from not accepting the world as it looks. All possibility of understanding is rooted in the ability to say no.
Susan Sontag
* Only that which narrates can make us understand. (Susan Sontag)
Fig. 1. Caspar David Friedrich - Evening Landscape With Two Men, c. 1830-35
To be unexpectedly (and suddenly) abandoned by a long-standing friend is not only the pinnacle of cruelty, it is also the ultimate act of kindness: one for which so few of us, in our abject, self-pitying grief, are capable of giving thanks - as we should.