A photograph gives us the naked truth,which has to be clothed by the imagination.
To some an extremely sharp picture may be positively painful, for it will perhaps disturb and break the train of thought, whereas a less-defined one would allow the mind to wander at its own sweet will.
The photographer sees the world as a child sees the bits of glass in a kaleidoscope. If he has a camera with which he can secure these ever-changing combinations, he is then able to look on them again and again, and he has the further pleasure of pleasing others with the sight of things which he, with perhaps unusual opportunities, was able to see, which his friends would otherwise not ever be able to.
The person who looks at a photograph as a complete picture, unable to say anything about anything except the facts which existed at the moment of exposure, does not see very far.
[My mother] would have me smothered like the Princes in the Tower if I showed any inclination for being an artist. She thought all artists little better than lunatics.
