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Whenever someone brings up the photography analogy, I always think they're completely missing the point. It's almost like you're Seeing as a State -- artists exist now, revolution happens, artists exist after.
What you're neglecting to mention is that the artists that exist in the present will not be the artists of the future. We had photorealistic painters, and later we had photographers. The latter were not made of the former. People will suffer, perish, anguish, and all of this stuff is important for understanding how things play out in the near future.
We had photographers, and then later we had photorealistic painters. Photorealism is an artistic reaction to photography.
I feel we are talking past each other. "In terms of the historical narrative, some artists were inspired by photography and made a cool synthesis of traditional art && the new technology" -- okay. But were there more artists (adjusting for base rate) creating realistic looking hand-drawn art pieces before or after the proliferation of the camera? Do you agree that the answer is before? Do you grasp the standard concerns shared amongst artists that believe before is the obvious answer?
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