Your're certainly entitled to your own opinion on it, but you are stating that it is shameless and therefore wrong to "self promote", my opinion on that is, utter nonsense. It's called being in "business" for yourself--------what is wrong with that? They were no doubt trying to put money in their pockests by selling prints just as many may do today. The manifesto was simply a core belief and a passionate one for those practitioners, just like it may be for some today, me included. I do not care for the "fuzzy wuzzies" myself or otherwise turning a photograph into something that does not look like a photograph. IMO, anytime I may post a photograph on the web, I am, in a manner of speaking, promoting "straight" photography in my own right but without the "manifesto", who needs one these days anyway.
I meant no slight nor insult to f64's motivation nor in general to the art of self promotion. Shameless self promotion is truly honorable and normally a requirement for success in business.
It is though, IMO, important to understand that f64's primary goal was to do more shows and sell more prints.
Understanding that it was primarily a business decision rather than an artistic one gives me an example of a shrewd business move. Put that in the context of the time understanding that New York markets had already moved away from pictorialism and that the west coast had not and we see that the f/64 group smartly seized the opportunity to be on the leading edge of and mold the changes that would eventually come west.
We could if we chose to, emulate their business decisions and ask ourselves where the world seems to be headed artistically, just as they did, and we could put together a cooperative to promote ourselves, just as they did, and we could define our group standards so that galleries who welcomed one of us would welcome the rest, just as they did.
Group f64, if starting out today, could use that same business model but they would probably define a very different artistic standard.