Tragedy is not singular. Each artform has its own form of tragedy, as does life itself. Lifes tragedy is obvious, the inevitability of death as a consequence of birth.

Narrative, literary, tragedy is the closest to this. Moving through time and space it necessitates plot. The tragedy in narrative is always tied up in cause and effect. What will happen is an inevitable consequence of what is happening, the end is defined by the start.

Photographic tragedy is different. The photograph is about a moment in reality which had been. Its static nature only focus our attention on the inevitable death of the moment recorded. It is not held in eternity but killed and embalmed. Photography is never about idealism but the depressing realism, the shadow of reality. Its oppositions are tragic reminders of lifes tragic transcience.

Painting tragedy is very different, a total opposition. Both are images but different kinds. Photograph can never not be, in its true form, a ghost of reality, intrinscally linked but opposite. Painitng is never about reality. Painting is always about idealism. In painitng the moment is false. A constructed falsehood, an artificial idealism; (Idealism is always artificial).

In painting the moment never dies. It did not, will not cannot have a cause or effect. It has no before or after. The before and after are the very ingredients of tragedy in photography. Yet the tragedy in painting is that the eternal moment will never pass yet remains forever false. It crumbles before our eyes. It never dies but it never lived.