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The simplest argument, supported by many painters and a section of the public, was that since photography was a mechanical device that involved physical and chemical procedures instead of human hand and spirit, it shouldn't be considered an art form; they believed camera images had more in common with fabrics produced by machinery in a mill than with handmade work created by inspiration. The second widely held view, shared by painters, photographers and some critics, was that, as a medium, it should be useful to other art disciplines but not as an art form in itself, since it couldn’t be considered equal in creativeness to drawing or painting.

The French influential critic and poet Baudelaire believed that lazy and uncreative painters would turn to photography. He had as strong belief in art as an imaginative embodiment of cultivated ideas and dreams, and regarded photography as "a very humble servant of art and science, like printing and stenography" - a medium largely unable to transcend "external reality." They associated photography with the industrial madness at the time, which in their view would have tragic consequences on the spiritual qualities of life and art.

Another approach opposing photography as art was the belief that with the growing acceptance and purchase of camera images by the middle class it was generating the "cheapening of art." In London at the time, for example, there were around 130 commercial establishments where anybody could purchase portraits, landscapes, genre scenes, and photographic reproductions of works of art.