>>4156947novelty helped a lot. these guys were among the first and did not seem as dull
in their day. dumb, but not as dull and played out.
you can only sell the same random first world street snapper or overly careful mountain shooter so many times before people start just writing off photography as a middlebrow art. now it's literally impossible to be the next winogrand, bresson, erwitt, etc or adams, gursky, salgado, etc by being anything like them. a rich family or a coincidence of racial heritage won't help you. it's all old news.
the new forefront of art photography is fully staged work, and if you can't innovate go with the most timeless one: photojournalism of very poor and unhappy people.