Many serious photographers were appalled. Their craft, and to some their art, was being co-opted by a newly engaged, uncontrolled and mostly untalented citizenry. The debate about art and photography intensified around the argument that if anyone could take a photograph then photography could not possibly be called art. Some of the most passionate defenders of photography as art pointed out that photography should not and cannot be seen as an "either/or" medium—some photographs are indeed simple records of reality, but with the right elements some are indeed works of art. William Howe Downs, art critic for the "Boston Evening Transcript", summed up this position in 1900 by saying "Art is not so much a matter of methods and processes as it is an affair of temperament, of taste and of sentiment ... In the hands of the artist, the photograph becomes a work of art ... In a word, photography is what the photographer makes it ‒ an art or a trade."