I'm certainly not an expert, but I do enjoy looking at photographs---most photographs anyway. Even calendar illustrations,
At the other end of the spectrum (so I've been told) is contemplative photography. The sort of stuff that recollects the ancient
momento mori----the inevitable death and decay.
This genre, if it can be called a genre, has left me cold more often than not and if not, I've probably missed the point:
A rusty '26 Buick in the desert isn't a spectre of death but a treasure awaiting someone's loving attention.
Peeling paint on the side of derelict building is a delightful curiosity of texture.
That's the way I see it anyway.

Notable photographers are sometimes known only for their contemplative---depressing--- images alone which I suppose is how marketing a brand works.

An exception may be Sally Mann, who captures juvenile mirth and rotting corpses with equal aplomb.
What she writes in What Remains I find very interesting while the images themselves fill me with guilt akin to violating a most ancient and universal of taboos. It reminds me of an early definition of "still life" applied to the hunter's bag, but even those images I find noble as there is dignity in the presentation.

I have not seen a copy of Ralph Eugene Meatyard's Father Louie: Photographs of Thomas Merton nor Dena Prasad Patnaik's Geography of Holiness but while searching for something else, some of Thomas Merton's photographs popped up on my 'puter.
Perhaps those books might help me to appreciate Merton's contemplative photography more.

Thomas Merton was a monk so was (or was supposed to be) living in poverty so social justice advocate John Howard Griffin loaned Merton a 35mm Canon FX to shoot contemplative images.

I spent some time this morning looking as a few of them, trying to get into the groove of momento mori.

But it didn't happen.

The gist of Merton's photographs, as I understand, is that everyday things in plain sight reflect the nature of momento mori and indeed there were everyday things---a watering can, chairs casting shadows, trees in dormancy, but the subtleness evades me.

The idea of contemplative photography intrigues me---perhaps (quite likely) I have no idea of the breadth of the genre but I find more to contemplate in the landscape than in the more acclaimed images reputed to the genre.

For me, for right now, nothing I've seen of Merton's work is memorable. Perhaps that was Merton's goal? But then, why?