2012年考研英语全真模拟题及答案解析(一) —5 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 |