As a person who has always been somewhat averse to populist tastes (liking the same things everybody else likes), one of my goals as an artist has been to express through the visual medium of photography things which I find beautiful, in the hope that doing so would demonstrate that beauty to people who might not have ever thought to find beauty in such things before.
Mainly, this applies to the human body and physical attraction, being a somewhat uncommon amalgam of sexual stereotypes that I nevertheless find (in reviewing my own photographs) to be attractive where others might expect to be repulsed. E.g., the ugly stereotype of the "man in a dress", versus the androgynously feminine creature who nevertheless possesses male anatomy that I portray in my works.
I'm not sure if my attempt at prying open new windows of perspective in other people's minds is entirely effective (and not just egotistical - "you must like what I like"), or if I'm just showing a minority of the population something they already like, but it's one of my goals and motivations as an artist, because when it comes to certain subjects, people are not so "you do you" in matters of taste as one would like to think.
And though diversity (in opinion as well as form) is generally touted as a virtue, it never stops bothering me the cold, hard fact that two people can look at the same thing, and one of them can see a God, while the other sees the Devil. How can one create any common ground in that case?
