as cameras get ever more sophisticated, more automated, more acute, some
photographers are tempted to disarm themselves or to suggest that they are
really not armed, and prefer to submit themselves to the limits imposed by a
pre-modern camera technology—a cruder, less high-powered machine being thought
to give more interesting or expressive results, to leave more room for the
creative accident. Not using fancy equipment has been a point of honor for many
photographers—including Weston, Brandt, Evans, Cartier-Bresson, Frank—some
sticking with a battered camera of simple design and slow lens that they
acquired early in their careers, some continuing to make their contact prints
with nothing more elaborate than a few trays, a bottle of developer, and a
bottle of hypo solution.
