On criticism:
Charles Baudelaire: "transform my pleasure into knowledge"
Margaret Fuller: "love wisely what we before loved well"
As soon as photographs were invented people wanted to buy portraits of their family and those they loved.
Photography is the first modern artform and people with access to cameras were able to produce photos of quality and substance without training or formal education.
Photography is inherently democratic and subversive as it calls into question the nature of aesthetics as no skill is necessary, instinct is sufficient.
The volume of photographs is intimidating, people create huge quantities. Commerce requires even more. The sheer volume makes a critical selection intimidating, perhaps even impossible.
Victims deserve our help and protection, and our compassion if we can muster it; but this does not mean that they are admirable or that they have no responsibilities to fulfill. Nor should we assume that suffering ennobles or that it creates emphatic identification.
Victimhood ... is the greatest killer of solidarity with others that could possibly be invented.
Kanan Makiya