“I have first to confess to a considerable dislike of photography as everyman practises it. I detest the sight of bands of tourists armed with cameras, and snapping everything into non-existence, like so many piranha-fish.”

From An Essay by John Fowles in Land, containing a portfolio of photographs by Fay Godwin.

Our photograph dates from a bygone era: the year 2007. The cameras pictured above have become as obsolete as telegraph wires. I write in defense of these young piranhas, whose latter-day descendants use smartphones to document the highs and lows and mundane events of their lives. I write against the severe words of John Fowles, described in a Wikipedia article as “an English novelist of international renown, critically positioned between modernism and postmodernism.” As a younger man I did read most of his books. His novel The Magus inhabited many nightstands among hipsters of the late sixties/early seventies (20th Century), alongside books by other authors in vogue at the time, having for example these engrossing titles: Stranger In A Strange Land, Siddhartha, and The Doors of Perception. Sadly, the comments of Mr. Fowles on vernacular photographers fall squarely into an ignorant elitist category.

Instead of fostering non-existence, our informal photographers transmute eye-blinks into a kind of eternal existence. In a way special to their medium, they are helping to restrain the cruel melting away of time and memory. Our professional writer continues, using imprecise imagery: piranha-fish do not destroy everything in sight; they consume only what they need to maintain themselves; and snap-shooters do not arm themselves with cameras as warriors do with their swords; rather they employ ordinary tools in a universally peaceful occupation. Furthermore they do not rove in bands like marauding criminals. And it is unfortunate the novelist uses a hyperbolic verb to describe his feelings about his fellow travelers and their cameras. According to one lexicographer, “detest includes the specter of violence.” It means “to feel an intense and often violent antipathy toward someone or some thing.”