Any important disease whose causality is murky, and for which treatment is ineffectual, tends to be awash in significance.

Because each photograph is only a fragment, its moral and emotional weight depends on where it is inserted. A photograph changes according to the context in which it is seen: thus Smith's Minamata photographs will seem different on a contact sheet, in a gallery, in a political demonstration, in a police file, in a photographic magazine, in a book, on a living-room wall. Each o these situations suggest a different use for the photographs but none can secure their meaning.

Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world -- in order to set up a shadow world of ''meanings.''

Some of the exuberance of my essay-writing has gone because I'm worried about the uses they could serve.

No 'we' should be taken for granted when the subject is looking at other people's pain.

It's almost as if this is the fundamental procedure in modern society: duplication and recycling.

Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.