Grace in photography

To remind ourselves of the significance of grace in photography – of the importance of seeming to do the job easily – we need only to examine a copy of a mass-circulated photography magazine. Most of the pictures suggest embarrassing strain: odd angles, extreme lenses, and eccentric darkroom techniques reveal a struggle to substitute shock and technology for sight. How many photographers of importance, after all, have relied on long telephoto lenses? Instead their work is usually marked by an economy of means, an apparently everyday sort of relationship with their subject matter.
Why do most great pictures look uncontrived? Why do photographers bother with the deception, especially since it so often requires the hardest work of all? The answer is, I think, that the deception is necessary if the goal of art is to be reached: only pictures that look as if they had been easily made can convincingly suggest that Beauty is commonplace.

page 30, “Beauty in Photography”, by Robert Adams

Good advice and a good book, worth picking up. Of course there are photographers who have relied on telephoto lenses, for example some of Andreas Feininger’s work, but the point of an economy of means is very relevant.