You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27–40, which

are based on the reading passage below.

IS PHOTOGRAPHY ART?
This may seem a pointless question today. Surrounded as we are
by thousands of photographs, most of us take for granted that, in
addition to supplying information and seducing customers,
camera images also serve as decoration, afford spiritual
enrichment, and provide significant insights into the passing
scene. But in the decades following the discovery of photography,
this question reflected the search for ways to fit the mechanical
medium into the traditional schemes of artistic expression.

The much-publicized pronouncement by painter Paul Delaroche

that the daguerreotype* signalled the end of painting is
perplexing because this clever artist also forecast the usefulness
of the medium for graphic artists in a letter written in 1839.
Nevertheless, it is symptomatic of the swing between the outright
rejection and qualified acceptance of the medium that was fairly
typical of the artistic establishment. Discussion of the role of
photography in art was especially spirited in France, where the
internal policies of the time had created a large pool of artists, but
it was also taken up by important voices in England. In both
countries, public interest in this topic was a reflection of the belief
that national stature and achievement in the arts were related.
From the maze of conflicting statements and heated articles on
the subject, three main positions about the potential of camera
art emerged. The simplest, entertained by many painters and a
section of the public, was that photographs should not be
considered ‘art’ because they were made with a mechanical
device and by physical and chemical phenomena instead of by
human hand and spirit; to some, camera images seemed to have
more in common with fabric produced by machinery in a mill than
with handmade creations fired by inspiration. The second widely
held view, shared by painters, some photographers, and some
critics, was that photographs would be useful to art but should
not be considered equal in creativeness to drawing and painting.
Lastly, by assuming that the process was comparable to other
techniques such as etching and lithography, a fair number of
individuals realized that camera images were or could be as
significant as handmade works of art and that they might have a
positive influence on the arts and on culture in general.

Artists reacted to photography in various ways. Many portrait

painters - miniaturists in particular - who realized that
photography represented the ‘handwriting on the wall’
became involved with daguerreotyping or paper photography in
an effort to save their careers; some incorporated it with painting,
while others renounced painting altogether. Still other painters,
the most prominent among them the French painter, Jean-
Auguste-Dominique Ingres, began almost immediately to use
photography to make a record of their own output and also to
provide themselves with source material for poses and
backgrounds, vigorously denying at the same time its influence
on their vision or its claims as art.
The view that photographs might be worthwhile to artists was
enunciated in considerable detail by Lacan and Francis Wey. The
latter, an art and literary critic, who eventually recognised that
camera images could be inspired as well as informative,
suggested that they would lead to greater naturalness in the
graphic depiction of anatomy, clothing, likeness, expression, and
landscape. By studying photographs, true artists, he claimed,
would be relieved of menial tasks and become free to devote
themselves to the more important spiritual aspects of their work.

Wey left unstated what the incompetent artist might do as an

alternative, but according to the influential French critic and poet
Charles Baudelaire, writing in response to an exhibition of
photography in 1859, lazy and untalented painters would become
photographers. Fired by a belief in art as an imaginative
embodiment of cultivated ideas and dreams, Baudelaire regarded
photography as ‘a very humble servant of art and science’; a
medium largely unable to transcend ‘external reality’. For this
critic, photography was linked with ‘the great industrial madness’
of the time, which in his eyes exercised disastrous consequences
on the spiritual qualities of life and art.

Eugene Delacroix was the most prominent of the French artists

who welcomed photography as help-mate but recognized its
limitations. Regretting that ‘such a wonderful invention’ had
arrived so late in his lifetime, he still took lessons in
daguerreotyping, and both commissioned and collected
photographs. Delacroix’s enthusiasm for the medium can be
sensed in a journal entry noting that if photographs were used as
they should be, an artist might ‘raise himself to heights that we
do not yet know’.

The question of whether the photograph was document or art

aroused interest in England also. The most important statement
on this matter was an unsigned article that concluded that while
photography had a role to play, it should not be ‘constrained’ into
‘competition’ with art; a more stringent viewpoint led critic Philip
Gilbert Hamerton to dismiss camera images as ‘narrow in range,
emphatic in assertion, telling one truth for ten falsehoods’.

These writers reflected the opposition of a section of the cultural

elite in England and France to the ‘cheapening of art’ which the
growing acceptance and purchase of camera pictures by the
middle class represented. Technology made photographic images
a common sight in the shop windows of Regent Street and
Piccadilly in London and the commercial boulevards of Paris. In
London, for example, there were at the time some 130
commercial establishments where portraits, landscapes, and
photographic reproductions of works of art could be bought. This
appeal to the middle class convinced the elite that photographs
would foster a desire for realism instead of idealism, even though
some critics recognized that the work of individual photographers
might display an uplifting style and substance that was consistent
with the defining characteristics of art.

These writers reflected the opposition of a section of the cultural

elite in England and France to the ‘cheapening of art’ which the
growing acceptance and purchase of camera pictures by the
middle class represented. Technology made photographic images
a common sight in the shop windows of Regent Street and
Piccadilly in London and the commercial boulevards of Paris. In
London, for example, there were at the time some 130
commercial establishments where portraits, landscapes, and
photographic reproductions of works of art could be bought. This
appeal to the middle class convinced the elite that photographs
would foster a desire for realism instead of idealism, even though
some critics recognized that the work of individual photographers
might display an uplifting style and substance that was consistent
with the defining characteristics of art.

* the name given to the first commercially successful

photographic images.
Questions 27-30
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write your answers in boxes 27-30 on your answer sheet.

27. What is the writer’s main point in the first paragraph?

A. photography is used for many different purposes.

B. photographers and artists have the same principal aims.
C. Photography has not always been a readily accepted art
form.
D. photographers today are more creative than those of the
past.
28. What public view about artists was shared by the French and
the English?

A. that only artists could reflect a culture’s true values

B. that only artists were qualified to judge photography
C. that artists could lose work as a result of photography
D. that artist success raised a country’s international profile

29. What does the writer mean by “the handwriting on the wall”
in the second line of paragraph 4?

A. an example of poor talent

B. a message that cannot be trusted
C. an advertisement for something new
D. a signal that something bad will happen

30. What was the result of the widespread availability of

photographs to the middle classes?

A. The most educated worried about its impact on public taste.

B. It helped artists appreciate the merits of photography.
C. Improvements were made in photographic methods.
D. It led to a reduction in the price of photographs.

Questions 31-34

Complete the summary of Paragraph 3 using the list of words, A-

G, below.
Write your answers in boxes 31-34 on your answer sheet.

A) inventive C) beneficial E) mixed G) inferior

B) similar D) next F) justified

Camera art
In the early days of photography, opinions on its future
were 31 ............................, but three clear views emerged. A
large number of artists and ordinary people saw photographs
as 32 ............................ to paintings because of the way they
were produced. Another popular view was that photographs could
have a role to play in the art world, despite the photographer
being less 33............................... Finally, a smaller number of
people suspected that the impact of photography on art and
society could be 34...........................
Questions 35-40

Look at the following statements and the list of people, A-E,

below.

Match each statement with the correct person.

Write the correct letter, A-E, in boxes 35-40 on your answer
sheet.
35. He claimed that photography would make paintings more
realistic.
36. He highlighted the limitations and deceptions of the camera.
37. He documented his production of artwork by photographing
his works.
38. He noted the potential for photography to enrich artistic
talent.
39. He based some of the scenes in his paintings on
photographs.
40. He felt photography was part of the trend towards greater
mechanisation.

A. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
B. Francis Wey
C. Charles Baudelaire
D. Eugene Delacroix
E. Philip Gilbert Hamerton
Click the button to Show/ Hide Answers.
Answer:
27. C
28. D
29. D
30. A
31. E
32. G
33. A
34. C
35. B
36. E
37. A
38. D
39. A
40. C