A subway worker walks away after a train departed the station in central Pyongyang, North Korea May 7, 2016. (Photo by Damir Sagolj/Reuters)

A Philippine boy collects used plastic bottles to be sold at a junk shop at Divisoria market in Manila on November 29, 2017. (Photo by Noel Celis/AFP Photo)

Everly Base, six, sees the funny side of a TV carol-singing performance with her classmates in which her father had dared her to cross her eyes while she sang in Yate, Gloucestershire, UK on December 19, 2024. (Photo by Tom Wren/South West News Service)

Light is the sole reason why life exists. It provides us with warmth; it allows us to see; it nourishes all the living things on this planet. Many painters, especially the masters of Old Renaissance Period, have recognized the importance of light and its intimate connection with nature and life itself. In their paintings they gave tribute to light, giving the impression that their paintings had a light source hidden within them. Al Hogue, the artist who created the paintings that you see before you, has studied their techniques for many years. As time went by, light permeated not only his paintings by also his life, becoming his sole philosophy.

A man dressed up as a "Catrin", a Mexican character also known as "The Elegant Death", is pictured during a Catrinas parade in Mexico City October 31, 2015. (Photo by Carlos Jasso/Reuters)

A Syrian youth Khaled from Raqqa walks on snow wearing slippers in the Bekaa Valley refugee camp in Lebanon after the first heavy snow storm hit Lebanon, January 3, 2016. (Photo by Jamal Saidi/Reuters)

Children hitch a ride with a passing tram in Dnipro, Ukraine on March 19, 2024. (Photo by Jack Hill/The Times)

Children playing on Walled City rooftop in Hong Kong, 1989. The lack of formal governance in the Walled City led to challenges, but it also fostered a unique system of informal social order. (Photo by Greg Girard/The Guardian)