Thank you for a very welcome contribution to the discussion.
I cannot answer the question about previous discussion of aesthetics as I have
been on the list for only three weeks !
I also find the work of the secessionists exquisite and exciting, as I do that
of Emerson who preceded them. It is often that very tactility that is the
touchstone of the enjoyment of the mystery in the image. I often seek that
mystery in my own gum prints but tend to a revelling in the wide possibilties
that the process brings when I work in platinum.
I have associated the change in taste to finely observed realism with Stieglitz
himself and the F 64 group rather than Adams alone.
I can sense a return to the crafted and interpretive image which I suppose is
welcome after eighty years !. My difficulty is that I find the arbiters of
taste, whoever they may be, to have the minds of small children who cannot cope
with more than one idea at a time.
I am still mulling over whether I prefer tactile or haptic. Tactility,
hapticity......
Terry King