If this is the way you feel then don't ever go to a theater or a restaurant. Don't ever play sports. Don't ever bother to prepare a home cooked meal. Just stay home, sit on your sofa, eat frozen pizzas from the microwave oven and watch television shows recorded on your TIVO.
The point of Ansel Adams' zone system is to learn, to discover and to create something from the knowledge gained. The point of Arubs' freaks is to show us something different from the clean, sanitized world that most people live in.
The point of photography is to take the real, three dimensional world and compress it into two dimensional space in such a way that the viewer understands. To do that, there are technical, compositional and visual concepts which are universal to photography that must be learned. The point of taking up photograph is to learn how to do that.
In order to learn those things, it is important to study the work of those who have come before.
Do I like Adams? Well, some but many are boring. However, I learn something from him every time I see one of his photos, like it or not.
I find Arbus' work repulsive in a train wreck sort of way but it doesn't matter whether I like them. It's not my call, really, but Arbus and others show us what can be done and what has been done and gives us inspiration to go out and do something ourselves.
To say that one should ignore Ansel Adams, ignore Arbus or ignore any other photographer's work is like saying you should ignore Broadway theater, ignore gourmet cooking, never be inspired to play sports or leave the house.
If this is what you think life should be like then just stay home and let everybody else live their lives and learn something while you just sit there and masturbate in front of your computer.
