Steiglitz Piece

This may be weird but for some reason while reading this, I really wanted to shout "Woohooo!" and clap for him. I found it quite amusing as he was really dissing the idea of professional photography and artistic photographs (when made by those whole claim them to be those things). He begins by the well familiar debate about photography calling under the sciences or art. he calls it the "bastard" of both. He says he doesn't care about any of that. What is important is that great work is produced. ".. And using the term amateur to convey the idea of immature productions and to excuse atrociously poor photographs." I found that quite funny honestly. Steiglitz article was incredibly believable and inviting because he did not choose one or the other. He put out the different  debates and arguments, but said, I don't care about any of that. He also didn't try to sell photography to us, he said, yes there are there great beautiful night photographs that have so much put into them But at the same time, yea there are these really bad ones too. But those ones have some credit in them too. also he admits that writing is even better than painting and photography, when it comes to expressing thoughts. I just liked his nonchalant, kind of sarcastic yet honest, tongue in cheek attitude. Also, he goes into something we have not encountered yet: Retouching. He quotes Dr.Emerson absolutely bashing retouching saying it takes a good or bad photo and makes it a bad drawing or painting. I loved how mad he was at the little tacky studio's that have fake backgrounds and head rests, claiming their artistic qualities. He takes us through a few innovations (from "gum print" to "platinum") and most importantly from "stiff characterless" to perfection. The portrait photograph, with true tones has improved enormously. He explains that "this is real photography.. that which the world is accustomed to regard as pictorial photography is not the real photography, but an ignorant imposition". Laszlo might agree with this in his concepts on accidental photography, with an awkward positioning, that without the camera, our eye tries to correct it, but when frozen in a picture just looks wrong and is thrown away . That may not be retouching directly, but someone could attempt to retouch that (a bad angle making you look like you have a double chin). but They both could argue that that is true photography, with real deformations and perspectives.