Self and World, An Explanation of Aesthetic Realism, by Eli Siegel (Definition Press, New York, 1981)

There is a deep and "dialectic" duality facing every human being, which can be put this way:  How is he to be entirely himself, and yet be fair to that world which he does not see as himself?  The definition of aesthetics is to be found in a proper appreciation of this duality. (from the chapter, The Aesthetic Method in Self-Conflict, p. 91)

Afternoon Regard For Photography, by Eli Siegel (Aesthetic Realism Foundation, 1967)

...we are going after the greatest emotion; and when photographs, like poems or plays or novels, live, it is attested to that someone had a great emotion.  The purpose of photography is to create an emotion about the world through what has been carefully seen and selected. (p. 2)

The History of Photography, by Beaumont Newhall (The Museum of Modern Art, 1964, 4th edition)

Old Paris, medieval Paris, lives for us in the brilliant photographs of the condemned areas which Charles Marville recorded for the government before Napoleon III had the great boulevards cut through the city.  Marville's camera was not an impersonal lens, for documentary photography is a personal matter.  It is not enough to set up the camera and record unthinkingly that which lies before it; choice of stance, choice of time of day, choice of details to emphasize or to subdue are subjective matters.  Marville's pictures of streets and houses, worn by human use but emptied of people, have the melancholy beauty of a vanished past. (p. 72)

The History of Photography, by Helmut Gernsheim (Oxford University Press, 1955)

The modern photographer scans the world for a different kind of beauty--the beauty of everyday life, the beauty of form, the beauty Atget discovered in the most humble and commonplace subjects, which reveals itself only to the man whose aesthetic sense has not been blunted by preconceived notions.  The observation of Fox Talbot in the infancy of photography still holds good:

A painter's eye will often be arrested where ordinary people see nothing remarkable.  A casual gleam of sunshine, or a shadow thrown across his path, a time-withered oak, or a moss-covered stone, may awaken a train of thoughts and feelings, and picturesque imaginings.--H. Fox Talbot, The Pencil of Nature, part i, 1844. (p. 356)

The Picture History of Photography, by Peter Pollack (Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1969)

There were two things I wanted to do.  I wanted to show the things that had to be corrected.  I wanted to show the things that had to be appreciated. (Lewis Hine, p. 306)

Photographers On Photography, edited by Nathon Lyons (Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966)

Whether a water-color is inferior to an oil, or whether a drawing, an etching, or a photograph is not as important as either, is inconsequent.  To have to despise something in order to respect something else is a thing of impotence.  Let us rather accept joyously and with gratitude everything through which the spirit of man seeks to an ever fuller and more intense self-realization. (Paul Strand, Photography, 1917, p. 137)