The Leica was designed for hand-held use. Leica lenses are designed for brilliance and lovely tonal quality above all, rather than extremely high resolution. Why? It is because resolution of the finest details can be lost with very slight camera movement anyway (hand-held, remember?) but the brilliance and ‘glow’ for which Leica lenses are famous survives hand-holding unscathed.
It irks me to no end that those who are given teaching positions in American university photography departments are almost always ‘landscape’ techno-fetishists like Dubovoy.
It is a crime to permit these sick and perverse individuals to speak unchallenged about what is ‘important’ in photography, because they don’t know.
In fact, what they ‘know’ is just plain wrong!
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” – Mark Twain
It is likely because those in positions of authority are impressed by kitsch such as that produced by Adams or Sexton, because it matches their bourgeois aesthetic sense.
I find the notion that ‘serious’ photography can be done only with a large-format camera, or at least a camera on a tripod, of static subjects, profoundly offensive.