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Text4
Picture-taking is a technique both for reflecting the objective world and for expressing the singular self. Photographs depict objective realities that already exist, though only the camera can disclose them. And they depict an individual photographer's temperament, discovering itself through the camera's cropping of reality. That is, photography has two directly opposite ideals: in the first, photography is about the world and the photographer is a mere observer who counts for little; but in the second, photography is the instrument of fearlessness, questing subjectivity and the photographer is all.
These conflicting ideals arise from uneasiness on the part of both photographers and viewers of photographs toward the aggressive component in “taking” a picture. Accordingly, the ideal of a photographer as observer is attracting because it implicitly denies that picture-taking is an aggressive act. The issue, of course, is not so clear-cut. What photographers do cannot be characterized as simply predatory or as simply, and essentially, benevolent. As a consequence, one ideal of picture-taking or the other is always being rediscovered and championed.
An important result of the coexistence of these two ideals is a recurrent ambivalence toward photography's means. Whatever are the claims that photography might make to be a form of personal expression just like painting, its originality is closely linked to the power of a machine. The steady growth of these powers has made possible the extraordinary informativeness and imaginative formal beauty of many photographs, like Harold Edgerton's high-speed photographs of a bullet hitting its target or of the swirls and eddies of a tennis stroke. But as cameras become more sophisticated, more automated, some photographers are tempted to disarm themselves or to suggest that they are not really armed, preferring to submit themselves to the limit imposed by pre-modern camera technology because a cruder, less high-powered machine is thought to give more interesting or emotive results, to leave more room for creative accident. For example, it has been virtually a point of honor for many photographers, including Walker Evans and Cartier Bresson, to refuse to use modern equipment. These photographers have come to doubt the value of the camera as an instrument of “fast seeing”. Cartier Bresson, in fact, claims that the modern camera may see too fast.
This ambivalence toward photographic means determines trends in taste. The cult of the future (of faster and faster seeing) alternates over time with the wish to return to a purer past when images had a handmade quality. This longing for some primitive state of the photographic enterprise is currently widespread and underlies the present-day enthusiasm for daguerreotypes and the work of forgotten nineteenth-century provincial photographers. Photographers and viewers of photographs, it seems, need periodically to resist their own knowingness. (451 words)
Notes: crop vt. 播种，修剪(树木)，收割。count for little 无关紧要。predatory 掠夺成性的。champion n. 冠军;vt. 支持。benevolent好心肠的，行善的。ambivalence 矛盾心理。make (+不定式)似乎要: He makes to begin. (他似乎要开始了。)swirls and eddies 漩涡。cult狂热崇拜。daguerreotypes (初期的)银板照相法。
36. The two directly opposite ideals of photography differ primarily in the
[A]emphasis that each places on the emotional impact of the finished product.
[B]degree of technical knowledge that each requires of the photographer.
[C]way in which each defines the role of the photographer.
[D]extent of the power that each requires of the photographer's equipment.
37. According to paragraph 2, the interest among photographers in each of the photography's two ideals can be described as
[A]steadily growing.
[B]cyclically recurring.
[C]continuously altering.
[D]spontaneously occurring.
38. The text states all of the following about photographs EXCEPT:
[A]They can display a cropped reality.
[B]They can convey information.
[C]They can depict the photographer's temperament.
[D]They can change the viewer's sensibilities.
39. The author mentions the work of Harold Edgerton in order to provide an example of
[A]the relationship between photographic originality and technology.
[B]how the content of photographs has changed from the nineteenth century to the twentieth.
[C]the popularity of high-speed photography in the twentieth century.
[D]how a controlled ambivalence toward photography's means can produce outstanding pictures.
40. The author is primarily concerned with
[A]describing how photographers'individual temperaments are reflected in their work.
[B]establishing new technical standards for contemporary photography.
[C]analyzing the influence of photographic ideals on picture-taking.
[D]explaining how the technical limitations affect photographers'work.
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发表于 2016-8-9 08:15:54