I really like the way you said that.

This topic is also confusing because everyone's treating beauty like it's an objective trait that just has to be acknowledged, when it isn't. Even if everyone agreed that a flower was beautiful, that would still only be individual, subjective experiences of finding beauty.

Really finding beauty (and not just following desire) is an experience of overcoming our preconceptions and opinions and our habits of reacting. It's an experience of transcending ourselves and everything we normally allow to separate us from the world, and unifying with the subject. Like loosing yourself and noticing, "In that moment nothing existed but her."

It's easier or harder to have the experience based on how our individual preconceptions, opinions, and habits align with what we're connecting with, and especially based on how practiced we are at dropping them. But if the experience isn't available to you it's a reflection of your rigidity here and not something that's absent in subject.

Art like photography is great because you assume there's something there that the artist is trying to show you, even if it's something you're initially repulsed by. So it can be like an invitation and a guide to find beauty where you normally wouldn't look for it. My favorite portrait book for this is A Kind of Rapture by Robert Bergman,. He just goes out on the street and takes pictures of people, many of them homeless and many that might not be called beautiful, and is really able to capture their divinity.