Experience extends to the thing itself, but only in extreme states, and perhaps even then only as an asymptote. On certain occasions of very clear consciousness things stand out to cleansed sight in their naked particularity and suchness. Each individual thing is startling, and the experience at such times is exhilarating and utterly fresh. One might notice that this intensified consciousness is not alien from the real and hence is paradoxically impersonal. The real dimension, or rather the dimension of reality immediately recognised and acknowledged at such times must therefore be latent at all other times, perhaps muffled or disguised in some way, or else flashing up in a fleeting instant before being buried in content that arises from the experiencing. A photograph, say, is a trace both of the thing and of the point of view, abstracted from the flowing lived situation, a reduction and translation of elements which is already capable of releasing wonder. Often the artistic element is taken to lie more in the point of view, in the freezing of the experiencing, and the eternalising of the interpretation, or in readier terms, of the intention. It ought to be otherwise, as the thing itself, its sovereign simplicity is the organ through which the experiencer's fragile and terrible contingency is discovered.