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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Sontag, confirming Walter Lippmann's assertion, argues that photography replaced which of the following media for representing the truth?
(a) Eye-witness testimonies.
(b) Scientific studies.
(c) Religious texts such as the Bible.
(d) Artistic representations such as paintings or drawings.

2. The first war photographer, whose work garnered him the position as "official photographer" of the Crimean War, was which of the following?
(a) Edmund Gosse.
(b) Robert Capa.
(c) Roger Fenton.
(d) Ernst Friedrich.

3. The media may inform the public of war crimes and atrocities, but often fails to capture the:
(a) Complicated circumstances, causes and impact of the event.
(b) Emotional struggles of the victims.
(c) Essence of the experience.
(d) Tension between combatants.

4. Which of the following pairs of images appeared side-by-side in a 1937 issue of "Life"?
(a) A mother holding her child while looking at the sky and Vitalis men's hair cream.
(b) A dying Republican soldier and Vitalis men's hair cream.
(c) A dying Republican soldier and a mother holding her child while looking at the sky.
(d) The bombing of Guernica and Vitalis men's hair cream.

5. Which was the first war to be "covered" by professional war journalists at the front lines?
(a) The American Civil War.
(b) World War I.
(c) The Spanish Civil War.
(d) World War II.

Short Answer Questions

1. Photographic representations of the Vietnam War was essential to promoting:

2. The conflicts in the Balkans in the 1990s stood out to many onlookers for which of the following reasons?

3. Which of the following images was often thought to represent a mother, looking tellingly into the sky during an air raid of the Spanish Civil War?

4. Sontag suggests that the camera always "kept company with _________".

5. How many images did the "Here Is New York" exhibit originally receive?

Short Essay Questions

1. Explain the significance of Jacques Callot's 1633 series of etchings titled "Les Miseres et les Malheurs de la Guerra" (The Miseries and Misfortunes of War). Why did Sontag discuss this work?

2. Discuss the significance of "Here is New York," the exhibit of photographs taken on September 11th during the collapse of the World Trade Center.

3. How do captions sway interpretations of images? Discuss one of the examples Sontag provides in Chapter 1.

4. Sontag asserted that "cameras have always kept company with death." What did she mean by this assertion?

5. Discuss the controversy surrounding the kidnapping of Daniel Pearl in Karachi in 2002. What was the main conflict?

6. Sontag agrees with Woolf's assertion that the educated class has failed to understand war. How is this a failure of empathy or imagination?

7. Explain how being a "spectator of calamities" occurring in far-off places is a "quintessentially modern experience."

8. Discuss the purpose of Virginia Woolf's "Three Guineas" as explained by Sontag, and explain why Sontag opens her book with this reference.

9. According to Sontag, how do mass Hollywood productions influence the public's perception of catastrophic or horrific events?

10. According to Sontag, do people prefer artistic renderings or straight-forward representations of atrocities? Why?

(see the answer keys)

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