parting thoughts from a respected member of a photography forum i frequent:
…Tolerance is a word we all are familiar with, but applying this in practice is shown to be more difficult. If you are tolerant this means you sometimes will encounter stuff you don’t like. That is not the end of the world, you could just ignore it and continue with something else. However, it was a strange experience to see that a group hailing from the acclaimed Land of Freedom should be the first to show intolerance and put an end to freedom of opinion for others. So we are no longer free to follow our own creativity.
This brings me to ponder what “photography” entails. For me photography is the visual expression of the human mind. It is not a process of acquiring the newest gear, it is a process of being introvert and really getting to know yourself. What you really should do is analysing your own feelings and attitudes. Pictures don’t come as an unpredictable event in a random process. We press the shutter because in a split second our mind receives a signal of recognition from what our eyes communicate to the brain. All we need to do is to filter the chain of events to isolate these signals, and then go on to understand why we respond to them. Much of this process can be done even without a camera present since it’s basically is an analysis of our perceptions and mind sets. It is a pursuit of the intellectual sides of our mind. This thought process knows no barriers.
Thus, we respond in visual terms to stimuli exerted by the creative processes of our own mind. Photography will encompass all aspects of humanity and the nature around us, of which we are but a small and insignificant part. There will be bright and dark sides, beauty and horror, sunshine and nightmare. All of this are elements of photography. When your creativity is stifled by censorship, your photography will falter or change into the harmlessness of instant memory recall, nothing added, nothing removed, nothing personal, no expressions and no works of art. If this is photography for you, please feel free to continue with it. For me it is time to go on with more meaningful activities…