Our desperation to break the spell of instrumental economic reason-- eg., by turning to beauty as the unexchangebale or non-commodifiable ---can lead us to fetishise art. We want to believe that art has power that points toward a better world by modelling a non-instrumental relationship with a thing.

This desire can become a trap. Art as the imago of the unexchangeable leads us to believe that there are things in the world that are not for exchange’ in a commercial culture that corners the market in all appearances of alternativeness. Roses are bought and sold just as much as soap powder in the marketplace.

Beauty cannot be contrasted with the ugliness of an industrial culture because is beauty is utilized to sell clothes in a consumer culture. Consumer culture has wrapped itself in beauty to persuade us to buy commodities on the credit card.

But what exactly does art photography transgress besides a few advertising and design l clichés? Can we seriously, for example, claim that abstract colour photography generates an experience of the sublime? And is it not hyperbole to describe art photography as horrifying or terrorising?

When the act of transgressing becomes ‘hot’ as in the fashion industry, then transgression no longer stands in a critical relation to an affirmative culture.

Art is a commodity and it admits it is one. In doing so art renounces its own autonomy and proudly takes its place among consumption goods