I recently started reading, "Criticizing Photographs: An Introduction to Understanding Images" by Terry Barrett. It's an excellent book, I highly recommend reading it. I've read it once or twice in the past, but it's one of those books that seem to change everytime you read it - you always find new and relevant insight.
Anyway, when I came across Allan Sekula's quote from "Dismantling Modernism" I was stunned. It was almost like I had thought that very thing but couldn't ever get it out (in written word). This quote sums up my theory about art and my purpose for making it. It's an evolution of understanding and it changes over time.
"Suppose we regard art as a mode of human communication, as a discourse anchored in concrete social relations, rather than a mystified, vaporous and ahistorical realm of purely affective expression and experience”.
Allan Sekula, “Dismantling Modernism” (1978)
Oh, and these are my new "Q" cards: