What hath God wrought?

"The passage of a whole day was reduced to fifteen minutes, and those who might not care to watch the changing skies loved to see their imitation, just as they flocked to see the Diorama imitating a nearby church they could have visited in actuality for free. This is one of the great enigmas of modern life: why the representation of a thing can fascinate those who would ignore the original." - Rebecca Solnit, on Daguerre's early Dioramas and images in general, from River of Shadows: Edweard Muybridge and the Technolgical Wild West