Page "Pictorialism" Paragraph 13

The impact of this change was enormous.

Suddenly almost anyone could take a photograph, and within the span of a few years photography became one of the biggest fads in the world.

Photography collector Michael Wilson observed " Thousands of commercial photographers and a hundred times as many amateurs were producing millions of photographs annually … The decline in the quality of professional work and the deluge of snapshots ( a term borrowed from hunting, meaning to get off a quick shot without taking the time to aim ) resulted in a world awash with technically good but aesthetically indifferent photographs.