What's Wrong With This Picture?

[SteveMR200]

It gradually dawned on me that something must be
wrong with the art of painting as practiced at that
time. With my camera I could procure the same
results as those attained by painters--in black and
white for the time being, perhaps in color later on.

I could express the same moods. Artists who saw my
earlier photographs began to tell me that they envied
me; that they felt my photographs were superior to
their paintings, but that, unfortunately, photography
was not an art.

I could not understand why the artists should envy me
for my work, yet, in the same breath, decry it because
it was machine-made; their "art" painting, because
hand-made, being considered necessarily superior.

Then and there I started my fight--or rather my
conscious struggle for the recognition of photography
as a new medium of expression, to be respected in its
own right, on the same basis as any other art form.
Then and there I decided to devote my life to finding
out what people really mean when they say one thing
and feel another; say one thing and do another.
--Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946)

--
Steve