Is beauty intrinsic? Or is it the human brain that makes it seem that way? All Photo Credits: Jeff Miller

Is Beauty Power?

It’s complicated.

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Famed 17th-century English naturalist John Ray once wrote that “beauty is power.”

If that’s true, the question is why beauty, however we define it, has such a powerful effect. Moreover, why does the sense of experiencing beauty often feel the same, whether we’re watching a child’s sleeping face or a gorgeous sunset?

I don’t pretend to have the answers. But I hope that our ability to recognize and appreciate beauty of all kinds is a sign of something deeper, a trigger that demands us to, as the 20th-century American author Willa Cather wrote, “imprison for a moment the shining, elusive moment which is life itself.”

Perhaps that’s the source of beauty’s power and why, if you’re like me, you can find it everywhere, from nature and music to architecture, art, patterns, and gesture — to name only a few examples.

Does that make beauty’s power an antidote to the unfolding horrors of life? Maybe not. But in the brief transcendence it offers, beauty’s power stops time and in that dazzling nullity, enraptures and calms.

In the images that follow, I highlight some of the Cather-like moments that made me think about the complicated nature of beauty’s power even as I was taking pleasure in its varied expression.

Confection perfection is its own form of beauty.

Birds see clearly what we can’t, a natural metaphor for the mystery of beauty.

Art Nouveau embraced beauty and found it in the weaving together of nature and the human form.

A Spanish face, staring back at us from the 15th century, suggests a beautiful inner life.

The sheer scale of unexpected beauty on a weekday morning can both stagger and inspire..

Patterning the elements of floral beauty add a different dimension to our appreciation.

For a decade or two in Vienna’s fabled history, architectural decoration transformed building exteriors into seductive tributes to ordered beauty.

Art Deco designers appreciated the beauty of simple but graphically powerful adornment.

Even while playing second fiddle to the sun, the moon has its own claim to beauty.

Nature’s springtime burst of life is a beautiful thing to behold.

Beauty can sometimes hide behind pained reflection.

Beauty can glisten as golden glory and angelic music.

The ocean blends beauty and power with a mesmerizing shimmer and beat.

Where snowflakes come to rest, there’s beauty in their repose.

The beauty of geometry pleases the eye and teases our senses.

Aerial maps showcase the beauty of topography through bird’s eye vision.

Atomized beauty reveals itself through colors, shapes, and an inner glow.

Dusk is beauty’s diagonal drawing board.

Beauty can sometimes be simple, direct, and rich with symbolic meaning.

Beauty encourages us to look inside.