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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is NOT one of the groups of people that Arbus photographed during her career?

2. Photography often makes the photographer incapable of _____________ - one can either document or do something else.

3. Whitman wanted people to begin to look at the essential ____________ of a person in order to define a person or object.

4. Photographs do not create ___________ but they reinforce existing morality, according to Sontag.

5. Whitman's idea was to look beyond the idea of __________ and of ugliness to see more in the world.

Short Essay Questions

1. What did Whitman think about those things which are often deemed trivial and those things considered to be real?

2. What does Susan Sontag suggest that photography has made society do in relation to reality?

3. On what other artistic areas does photography impose standards according to Sontag in this chapter?

4. What did the Farm Service Administration effectively show about the power of photography?

5. How does surrealism look at wealth, which is the same way that photography seems to look at wealth?

6. Who were some of the groups of people who Diane Arbus took pictures of when she was creating portraits?

7. How was "Family of Man" an opposite representation of what Whitman was trying to saw about humanity?

8. Why is surrealism not necessarily a universal art form, according to this particular chapter?

9. What did Steichen thus do with his photographs in terms of creating importance with the subject of the picture?

10. How are photographs usually held as definitive evidence in the world, according to Sontag?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

In Plato's cave, the prisoners are only able to see the shadows of what is real, not the actual objects.

Part 1: Why do you think Sontag used this image to begin a discussion of photography?

Part 2: How would life be different if you could only see shadows?

Part 3: Do you think you'd like a world in which all you saw were the shadows? Why or why not?

Essay Topic 2

The Farm Security Administration once did a photography project which sought to capture the 'common' man

Part 1: How do you define the idea of a common man? Is this definable?

Part 2: Why is it important to document that image of a common man? Or isn't it?

Part 3: How can images of what is common change the way the world works?

Essay Topic 3

According to Sontag, painting favors beautiful items while photography favors less than attractive objects.

Part 1: Why do you think painting is used for beautiful items?

Part 2: Do you think painting can only be used for beautiful things? Why or why not?

Part 3: Do you think that photography focuses only on those things which are less attractive? Why or why not?

(see the answer keys)

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