Henry Peach Robinson
[Photographer, b. 1830, Ludlow, Shropshire, England, d. 1901, Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England.]
Photography is becoming so very useful that it is a question whether it will not in time be forgotten that it was originally intended as a means of representing the beautiful, and became known only as being the humble helper in everybody’s business except its own, from that of the astronomer, who uses it to discover unexpected worlds, down to that of the “brewer and baker and candlestick maker.”
(1896) 
It was soon evident in my lodgings that I had become a dangerous lunatic, and there would be nothing left to destroy if strong measures were not taken. So I was turned out of the house, but it was only into the garden, where I was allowed to build a small darkroom of oilcloth.
It is [the photographer’s] imperative duty to avoid the mean, the base and the ugly, and to aim to elevate his subject... and to correct the unpicturesque... A great deal can be done and very beautiful pictures made, by a mixture of the real and the artificial in a picture.
(1867)
I must warn you against a too close study of art to the exclusion of nature and the suppression of original thought... Art rules should be a guide only to the study of nature, and not a set of fetters to confine the ideas or to depress the faculty of original interpretation in the artist, whether he be painter or photographer.
(1867)
