George Bernard Shaw
[Writer, critic, and dramatist, b. 1856, Dublin, d. 1950, Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England.]
Photography is so truthful—its subjects are so obviously realities and not idle fancies—that dignity is imposed on it as effectually as it is on a church congregation.
(1901) 
... the eyes of artist had been so long educated to accept the most grossly fictitious conventions as truths of representation that many of the truths of the focusing-screen were at first repudiated as grotesque falsehoods.
(1901)
It is monstrous that custom should force us to display our faces ostentatiously, however worn and wrinkled and mean they may be, whilst carefully concealing all our other parts, however shapely and well preserved.
There is a terrible truthfulness about photography that sometimes makes a thing ridiculous... take the case of the ordinary academician. He gets hold of a pretty model, he puts a dress on her and he paints her as well as he can and calls her “Juliet,” and puts a nice verse from Shakespeare underneath, and puts the picture in the Gallery. It is admired beyond measure. The photographer finds the same pretty girl; he dresses her up and photographs her, and calls her “Juliet,” but somehow it is no good—it is still Miss Wilkins, the model. It is too true to be Juliet.
On the whole, I greatly prefer photographers who value themselves on being photographers, and aim at characteristically photographic technique instead of a sham brush-and-pencil one.
(1901)
