One set of messages of the society we live in is: Consume. Grow. Do what you want. Amuse yourselves.

...to photograph is to frame, and to frame is to exclude.

An important job of the critic is to savage what is mediocre or meretricious.

While a painting, even one that meets photographic standards of resemblance, is never more than the stating of an interpretation, a photograph is never less than the registering of an emanation (light waves reflected by objects) — a material vestige of its subject in a way that no painting can be.

The camera can be lenient; it is can also expert at being cruel. But its cruelty only produces another kind of beauty, according to the surrealist preferences which rule photographic taste.

So successful has been the camera's role in beautifying the world that photographs, rather than the world, have become the standard of the beautiful.

I'm more cautious about what I write.