Peter Henry Emerson
[Writer and photographer, b. 1856, LaPalma, Cuba, d. 1936, Falmouth, Cornwall, England.]
The limitations of photography are so great that, though the results may, and sometimes do give a certain aesthetic pleasure, the medium must rank the lowest of all arts,
lower than any graphic art, for the individuality of the artist is cramped, in short, it can hardly show itself.
(1891, in a recantation of his earlier advocacy of photography.) 
It is not the apparatus that chooses the picture, but the
man who wields it.
The principal object in the picture must be fairly sharp,
just as sharp as the eye sees it and no sharper, but everything else, and all other planes of the picture, must be subdued... slightly out of focus.
(1886)
Photography was only confessing its weaknesses when it indulged in the alteration of tonal values, false emphasis to certain areas of the picture, and the use of soft focus and special effects.
(1889)
