What, then, is so wrong with the camera? Nothing, thought Ruskin initially… Yet Ruskin’s enthusiasm diminished as he observed the devilish problem that photography created for the majority of its practitioners. Rather than using photography as a supplement to active, conscious seeing, they used it as an alternative, playing less attention to the world than they had done previously from a faith that photography automatically assured them posession of it.

– Alain de Botton, summarising John Ruskin’s view of photography.