[southerncross]

I disagree very much   Selective focusing exists since Dr. Erich Salomon used an Ermanox to become the "invisible photographer". He was killed by the Nazis, so a bit more than only a decade. It was not first "bokeh" and then "fast lenses", the bokeh became fashion lately and started it's career around 1990. I think you mean as "status symbols" the Otii from Zeiss?

 

Some say it's worth the price and judging something as "status symbol" only tells me about "one is envy" - otherwise you could stay calm. f/1.4 lenses became "normal", more affordable around 50 years ago.

 

I expect a photographer to do selective focusing. I want him or her to decide what I am supposed to see - we all tell a story very focused, otherwise our audience would go to bed before we elaborated about the exact dressing of the aunt of the main person...

 

When you think about how much pictures are taken daily, how much of them make it to the internet and how few of them are taken with f/1.0...f/2.0 your point becomes quickly irrelevant - but when we look at which pictures get the most clicks ( = drags the most attention; ≠ are the best pictures) things might look different, I suspect.

Ask flickr...

 

This might have to do with thumbail views, when you do a photo search. It also might have to do something with a lot (affordable) lenses coming out with fast apertures and people try to learn how to handle them. I'm sure in your life were also at some age some subjects overly present. Nothing to worry about, it will pass. But complaining? Why not inventing the new big thing? 

I have nothing angaist available light photography, but I think selective focus in this case came out of necessity before becoming an artistic statement in itself.

 

But my point was that a lot of people felt the need to differient their selves from the point and shot crowd by using their aperure advantage. A creative clutch. Thus bokeh returned with a vengence in the last decade. 

 

I expect framing and composition to give me the highlights, in other words the enterity of the photo to show me what to look selective focus can be a part of this or maybe not. 

 

As for me having started with manual focus and exposure and f/1.8 and f/2.0 lenses in the film era, in digital I tried to tame another beast, the ultra-wide, fisheye, macro and telephoto range. I think I failed but I became better in wide to short telephoto range. I think I qualify as someone who could walk the 85mm f/1.4 FF route but choose not to do it.