Why Photography?

So here's the thing: if I were a painter, it might occur to me to have two white shoes, two black shoes, a play between the idea of legs and chair legs, a confusion of space and directionality and depth and flatness, and so on.

But that fifth shoe stepping into a little pool of light -- that's photography. That's why using some kind of device to observe the real world is interesting.

(This was yesterday, at a get-together for art historians. The black shoes? Studying photo history. The white shoes? Interested in early photographic processes.)