In 1922, the Pictorial Photographers of America published their annual volume showcasing the finest art photography in the country. Its unsigned editorial preface, titled simply "Sincerity," contained a razor-sharp critique of creative culture that reads as though it were written yesterday — about Instagram, about AI-generated art, about the entire attention economy of images we now inhabit.

He who reverently observes life and wrests from its verities those elements which are in tune with his "ego" — transposes these into some concrete form without the damning desire for self aggrandizement, pretense, or mere seeking for originality — is building on good foundations. It is from an over-weening desire for originality that most of the affectations of so called "Modern Art" proceed.

Read that again: "the damning desire for self aggrandizement, pretense, or mere seeking for originality." A century before the algorithmic feed, before the like button, before "content creation" became a career, a group of photographers diagnosed the exact disease that would come to define visual culture in the 2020s.

The essay builds its argument on a deceptively simple anecdote. The author describes visiting a gallery in Chicago showing arctic sketches by an artist named Bradford. When the author exclaims how true the paintings are, a companion challenges him:

"How do you know?" said my companion, "you have never been to the North Pole." "That is not necessary" I rejoined. "These studies have the truth written in every inch of them."

This is the forgotten claim at the heart of the essay: that sincerity is visually legible. That a viewer can perceive whether a work was made from genuine observation or from a desire to perform originality — even without firsthand knowledge of the subject. The work, they argued, "proclaimed the sincerity of its maker."

Modern psychology has quietly validated this intuition. Research on "authentic expression" in visual art suggests that viewers are remarkably sensitive to what psychologists call perceived effort and intentionality. Studies on the "art of noticing" — a phrase now common in mindfulness circles — echo what these photographers called "reverently observing life." The connection between careful observation and compelling imagery is not mystical; it is perceptual. Viewers detect the difference between someone who looked hard at the world and someone who looked hard at other people's work.

What makes this especially striking is the context. In 1922, photography was fighting for its life as a legitimate art form. The companion volume from 1920, introduced by Clarence H. White, had to argue the basic case that photography was more than "merely a mechanical process" — that it could be "a medium by which the action of light upon sensitive surfaces may be so controlled as really to interpret scenes and persons in the individualistic spirit of a true art." These photographers were the underdogs. And yet, rather than chasing novelty to prove their artistic bona fides, they warned against exactly that impulse.

Today, when AI image generators can produce millions of "original" images per hour, and when social media rewards the most attention-grabbing visual trick over the most honestly observed moment, the Pictorial Photographers' argument lands with renewed force. Originality is now the cheapest commodity in existence. What remains scarce — what was scarce even in 1922 — is the patience to look at something real and render it with sincerity. The algorithm cannot replicate reverent observation. It can only replicate the appearance of it.

A century later, we are drowning in originality and starving for sincerity. These photographers saw it coming.