Hans Madland

To see life as it is and not dive into a pit of despair, to find beauty everywhere, and to surrender to wonder—this is what I try to bring to my photographs.  I believe that we are either lifted up or beaten down mostly by our own predisposition.  Our world is filled with wonder.  Is it our obsession with beauty that limits our vision?  I find beauty in a weather-beaten face on an old woman, the lines and creases her testament to a life lived fully, not always joyfully, but nobly.

As an immigrant, I have a detachment difficult for those born here to attain.  Perhaps only the somewhat marginalized outsider is able to step back, to detach, to gain perspective and to frame that which is there and to represent it such that we see it for the first time.  The ordinary can become extraordinary, the banal sublime, the sad wonderful.  It may be that in the end it’s up to us to find wonder in the ordinary even the ugly.  Perhaps failing to do so is a failure of the imagination.  My apartness is both the source of inspiration and the nagging voice of desperation.

My intent here is to show you what I see when I look at this wonderful world that we are fortunate to live in for a few years.  We all see the same but perceive different realities.  I make no claims for what I here show you other than to say as Louis Armstrong said:

I think to myself,
What a wonderful world.

Yes, I think to myself,
What a wonderful world.

Oh yeah.