Photography is arguably the most mechanized artform that has ever existed. In the old days it was the mechanism of the camera and the chemistry of film, paper and darkroom. Now the camera has become a sensor surrounded by sophisticated software, and the darkroom has become the mysterious god Photoshop, which, like the ancient deity of the Bible, can be both angry and merciful, and no mortal soul has any hope of truly understanding. A glance at the plethora of Photoshop self-help books at your local bookstore quickly confirms the fact that photography attracts people who have been mesmerized by the “mechanism” and can’t see very far beyond it—people whose images often look like desiccated Magritte (“Look how I can put a naked lady inside a rock!”) or souped-up Ansel Adams on acid (“Why make a tree green when it could be orange?”).
 
There is nothing inherently wrong with taking pleasure in the mechanism of photography. Just as painters enjoy the texture of the canvas and the viscosity of oil paint, photographers become photographers in part because they feel comfortable with the tools and processes of the medium, be they analog or digital. But with the best workers—photographers whose images continue to nourish people well beyond the artist’s lifetime—the camera almost always becomes the conduit for some great passion. For Eugène Atget it was the streets and storefronts of Paris. For Dorothea Lange it was the pathos of the Great Depression. Walker Evans had rural Alabama, Lewis Hine had Ellis Island, Edward Weston had Carmel, California—not to mention green peppers…