Jonathan,
Please try to tell us something that everyone doesn't already know. We all know that photography involves combinations of technique, choice of subject matter, choice of equipment, treatment of subject matter, degrees of artistic judgement as well as sometimes sheer luck and so on.
There's no need to keep repeating the obvious, that you need a camera to take a photograph and that any camera is not necessarily a suitable tool for all tasks.
We understand that. We're not as retarded as you think
You obviously are, as you continue to argue in defense of Ken Rockwell, whose "camera doesn't matter" article argues forcefully against what you just said, and strongly advocates the notion that the only relevant factors in photography are the creativity and skill of the photographer.
No. I'm the one who has been finding meaning in such a statement, by using a bit of nous, and the meaning is not that the camera literally has no relevance whatsoever to the taking of a photograph. I don't find that reading or interpretation at all meaningful, but some people obviously do.
The problem is that to derive
your interpretation from what Rockwell wrote, you have to engage in a process that completely discards what the words actually say, and replace the obvious common-sense meaning of the words with what you
want them to mean. This is the same illogical process that Bill Clinton used to claim that he didn't lie when he said "I did not have sexual relations with that woman", and that lawyers use on a daily basis to pervert justice to their own advantage (
as in the case of the man who stabbed his wife to death, got out after less than 2 years in prison, and then proceeded to collect nearly a million pounds inheritance from his dead wife's estate). It's also used by cult leaders to justify the forced marriage of multiple underage girls to middle-aged men (
FLDS), persuade their followers to drink poisoned Kool-Aid (
Jim Jones), or induce them to commit murder (
Charles Manson). It's also used by every terrorist organization in the world from white supremacists to Muslim extremists to justify their acts of mass murder, torture, rape, and other atrocities based on their fallacious interpretation of their favorite holy book. If you think it is acceptable to ignore what words say they mean and interpret them however you like, simply because you want to interpret them that way, there is no limit to what you can justify.
If Ray's interpretation is wrong, then what do you think Adams, Evans, Haas, and Feininger were trying to communicate in the quotes attributed to them?
The Adams quote certainly does NOT support Rockwell's premise. Stating that the photographer's brain is the
most important aspect of photography is quite different than stating that it is the
only significant aspect of photography. I haven't bothered to check, but it wouldn't surprise me if some of the other quotes were similarly taken out of context or otherwise misused. But regardless of whether the quotes are used appropriately or not, Rockwell's point is still dubious at best, regardless of what celebrity endorsements he may claim supports it.
