Sometimes, wrote the author Markus Zusak, “people are beautiful. Not in looks. Not in what they say. Just in what they are.”

Those, I realize are what the beautiful people I like to photograph are all about. And I am a photographic snob. I only take pictures of people who are beautiful to me, and who are beautiful in my portraits.

If you try to find a clear and simple definition of beauty anywhere, you will be quickly disappointed or confused. Merriam Webster says that beauty is the quality or “aggregate” of qualities in a person or thing that gives pleasure to the sense or pleasurably exalts the mind or spirit, as in loveliness.

Wikipedia says beauty is the “ascription” of a property or characteristic to an animal, idea object, person or place that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure or satisfaction. An “ideal” beauty is an entity which is admired, or possesses features widely attributed to beauty in a particular culture. Ugliness is said to be the opposite of beauty.

You get the idea. There is no plain definition of beauty. We are on our own when it comes to defining it, there is no universal or commonly accepted definition of what beauty is, certainly not in the English language.

Like every thing else, the perception of beauty is personal, individual. I can’t tell anyone else what beauty is, I can only tell me. And our popular culture has so mangled and screwed up the idea of what beauty is, I am persuaded to look inward, not outward. Beauty is the combination of traits and senses that stirs my soul and gives me joy and hope.

It is amazing, wrote Tolstoy, “how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.”

Beauty is not the same thing as goodness to me, it is rather about the soul, the human spirit.

Since no one in my existence has ever referred to me as beautiful, I feel I’m somewhat qualified to think about what beauty is or isn’t to me.

This issue comes up for me all of the time because I only do portraits of people I think are beautiful. I can’t take a good portrait of someone I don’t like. The camera keeps me honest.

I understand that my idea of beauty is radically different from the idea of beauty reflected as part of movies, magazines, TV, aesthetics, culture, social psychology, philosophy or sociology. Beauty is not about body shape or structure, not about skin or hair or posture.

No sculptor would ever make a marble statue of me, clothed or not, no director would cast me as the star of a movie, no editor would put me on the cover of a magazine.

I’m learning through my photography and writing that beauty is about character, not looks or body shape. At least that is how I am learning to define beauty.

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, the great sociologist, expressed what I feel eloquently:

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”

This is so true, at least to me.

Beautiful people have depth and some wisdom, joy and some sorrow, a light in their eyes.  They seem to grasp the drama of the human condition. Beautiful people do not just get ordained by magazine editors or movie producers. They are, like glaciers, the product of time and experience, and quite often, of pain and loss.  They have to live it.

I know without knowing that Robin, who everyone loves, has experienced real suffering and loss. You can see it in her eyes. That’s why  I love to take her photograph, she is truly beautiful.

She simply has too much empathy and humor for it to be otherwise. In fact, one of Robin’s best friends wrote me to tell me about some of Robin’s sufferings.

I won’t, of course, repeat those stories here, but it makes sense. Robin understands the feelings of other people. Isn’t beauty so often linked with compassion,  gentleness, and loss.

People can be powerful, but that doesn’t make them beautiful.

I often think Maria will wake up and sit up in her bed one day shrieking in horror at the man lying next to her, as if she has awoken from an awful dream.

From the first, my photography  challenged me to consider and understand my idea of beauty, especially when it comes to my portraits of women, many of whom who have complained bitterly about the ways our culture defines beauty for them, and about the idea that men have usually been the ones who get to do the defining.

Conventional notions of beauty have caused countless pain to so many women, across all of recorded history.

I suspect my grandmother had something to do with my idea of beauty. She was a stout, stooped Russian peasant with cheap dresses and cheaper jewelry. I thought she was the embodiment of beauty, she loved me dearly and unswervingly, she was tender and wise.

I think of Robin, the waitress I have been photographing at Jean’s Place, and of Kelly before her. From the first, I saw these women as beautiful, that’s why I wanted to take their portraits. I would not describe either of them as “ugly” in any way, yet I also know they do not fit the conventional movie/TV/magazine idea of what beauty is. Like me, neither of them will ever make the cover of Vogue Magazine.

So what is beauty to me? It is not what society defines as beautiful it is not Gwyneth Paltrow or Lady Gaga or our First Lady.

Beauty, I have learned, is the feeling a person inspires inside of me, the feeling she awakens in me. When I took Robin’s photograph for the first time, it quickly made the rounds on social media of her friends, neighbors, customers and family members.

I wondered sometimes if every person she knew didn’t write to thank me, to tell me how wonderful she is, how loving, how sensitive and hard-working. One cousin wrote to say “Robin is my best friend, and I don’t care if she has 20 other best friends, she will always  be the best friend I know.” People wrote about her grace, her generosity, her loyalty and  honesty. “She is just the best person there is,” wrote a very close relative.

Wow, I thought. How beautiful. Nobody I know would ever describe me in those terms.

But it was also affirming, because it told me I was right about Robin. She is beautiful in the same way Kelly Nolan is beautiful, it isn’t about what people look like, it’s about the feeling of love and connection they trigger in the minds and hearts of other people.

Perhaps, I thought, there is hope for me yet.

I understand why so many women I admire hated the Miss America Pageant. The pageant has always enabled and shaped the popular idea of what beauty is.

I imagine that makes it very difficult to be a woman, yet in my eyes Robin is quite beautiful. I understand that this is about me, not just her.

Robin is a strong woman, she cheerfully poses for portraits when I see her, her genuineness and authenticity come through.

There is no pretension in her, no mask, no preoccupation with the external and common idea of beauty. As her friends and neighbors were quick to tell me, she is generous and caring.

To me, this is what beauty is.

I think this is why I love taking portraits of strong and good women, and strong and good men. I might one day put on a photo show of the Beautiful People I Have Known.