These Counter-Axioms should challenge photographic dogma, expose exceptions, and occasionally say, “Stop taking yourself so seriously.” Here is the companion set of counter-axioms for the Thirty Axioms of Monochrome. The Wall ©2026 Eric Hatheway Leica M6, Summicron 35, Tri-X 400 Every photographic principle eventually becomes a cliché. The Counter-Axioms exist…
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Black-and-white photography is not color photography with the color removed. It is a different photographic language, with its own vocabulary, grammar, ambiguities and prejudices. These are not rules. Rules tell you what to do. Axioms propose what might be true. 1. Color is the scene. Black and white is the…
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Every serious operator of the Bad Art Detector™ should know how to recognize kitsch. Not because kitsch is necessarily bad, but because it is one of the great shape-shifters of visual culture. It can be ugly, beautiful, sincere, ridiculous, sentimental, nostalgic, commercial, or all of the above at the same…
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The series of paintings String Theories begins with a simple premise: everything is connected, although the evidence is rarely conclusive. These paintings occupy the uneasy territory between order and disorder, geometry and gesture, calculation and intuition. Blocks of color establish a kind of architectural framework—rectangles, fields, compartments, planes and boundaries—while…
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The PVS59 Pre-Visualization Scope has finally arrived to solve one of the great unresolved problems of contemporary image-making: apparently, looking at something and deciding how to photograph it was not complicated enough. Designed for artists, photographers, cinematographers and other people who have somehow managed to avoid the comforting simplicity of…
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The French curve was invented to solve problems, not create them. It is an obedient servant of engineers, architects, and draftsmen—a cold piece of steel that promises perfect, repeatable curves with no surprises and no opinions. It exists to eliminate human error. That seemed like an excellent place to begin.…
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In the middle of the twentieth century, at a moment when architecture was rapidly aligning itself with industry, standardization, and the logic of the machine, Le Corbusier proposed something at once rational and poetic: a system of measurement rooted not in abstract units, but in the human body. He called…
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There are many noble pieces of advice offered to young artists. Study the masters. Practice daily. Learn anatomy. Respect composition. Observe light. Carry a sketchbook. Be humble. Be bold. Be original. Be timeless. And then, somewhere off to the side—leaning against a wall, coffee in hand, slightly amused at the…
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Legally, Grand Theft Donut is the unlawful taking and carrying away of a donut belonging to another person, with the intent to permanently deprive the owner of that donut, where the value of the donut exceeds a specified statutory amount or meets criteria established by law. When the lawyers get…
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The Artist 
Rude Boy