In the Eastern Orthodox liturgy of St Basil the Great, the priest announces readings with "Wisdom! Let us be attentive" and I feel maybe jsroclit's post should have been similarly heralded.
Even if you look at something and know it's crap it's worth bringing a little charity and humility to your discussion of it. Even if the photographer thinks it's good and other people think it's good and every bone in your body and hair on your head is bored by it, it's worth recognising that it is probably, nevertheless, the work of someone who cared about what he was doing and thought he saw something worth preserving and worth showing to others. Maybe it's someone young and learning, maybe it's someone who entirely lacks understanding of the art and will never be able to successfully convey what he saw in an image or maybe it's someone for whom what is banal to you is still new and fresh. Or maybe you've missed something in the work. We aren't all equally equipped to see the merit that's there. Chesterton said "is ditchwater dull? Naturalist friends with microscopes tell me it teems with quiet fun". Whichever it is tolerance rather than impatience is more likely to lead to the spread of insight. And anyone who is tempted to criticize a photograph, street, landscape, or other, might want to think back to his teenage years and consider how easy it was then to hint at a superior understanding and taste by savaging the songs friends and acquaintances liked and how hard it was, when a song is being ridiculed, to say no, that's good. Cynicism is a much easier pose to carry off than earnestness if you want to seem grown up and cool. But there's a lot more to be gained by thinking about and talking about why things succeed than there is in just pointing out that something's failed.
