Hi Helen: I didn't mean you admire photographers because of their lenses... 🙂
All I cleared was that some of us (just me?) don't care too much about the lens as long as it's a good lens... I wouldn't prefer Nadar's shots of Baudelaire made with another lens... At all! I don't care too much, if I make a portrait, which of my lenses I use: my Leica 90 Summicron or my Nikkor 105 2.5 or my 150 2.8 Sonnar are good enough for me, and I don't care about their small differences: I care about everything else in the portrait... But that's me...
Cheers,
Juan