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Photography in Europe was largely guided by the notions of the picture 11 May 2025, 06:04
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Question 4


Ilanchezhiyan
Why can't the answer for Qn. 4 be option B ? I understand it changes reality. But as the underlined excerpt from the para below suggests,

"The tourists invaded the Indians’ privacy, photographing sacred dances and places, paying the Indians to pose, and making them so self-conscious that they revised their ceremonies."

it exposed their secrets?
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(B) is tempting, but invading a group's privacy isn't necessarily the same as exposing their inner secrets. For example, photographing celebrities while on vacation certainly invades their privacy without exposing their inner secrets.

Also, invasion of privacy is only part of the author's description of photography's predatory side. There's the invasion of privacy, the direct manipulation of reality (paying the subjects to pose), and the indirect altering of reality (making them so self-conscious that they revised their ceremonies).

The fact that American photographers are altering reality, directly and indirectly, for their own benefit (getting a "goal shot") is what makes it predatory, so (A) is a better fit.

For more on (A), check out this post: https://gmatclub.com/forum/photography- ... l#p3385829.
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Photography in Europe was largely guided by the notions of the picture 12 May 2025, 04:02
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Thank you for taking the time to explain in detail. I understood where I went wrong. Besides, I enjoyed reading your ramblings :D
PeachSnapple1
Very good question! I fell for B myself. I got to B after reading [photographing sacred dances and places.] My thought was, if those are considered sacred, it means those dances and places are kinda an inner secret to the Indians. And if anyone took a picture of those sacred dances and places somehow, he/she may expose those images by sharing them online or with friends, thus exposing the Indians' inner secret. Furthermore, A says [changes the reality that the photographer studies] - the part [change the reality] caught me off guard as I believe that if I change something, the outcome is still a part of my reality. I mean, from a philosophical standpoint, no one can really change the reality - they can only change the expectation, the tradition, the policy, etc. Well, unless you have the Izanagi skill from the Sharingan from the Manga series Naruto.

Anyway, thank you for being patient with my rambling. I swear sometimes I am just not convinced with some of the explanations in some of the GMAT answers, but oh well.
Anyway, here is the OG explanation for B [In its discussion of the predatory nature of photography, the passage mentions invasions of privacy, and it suggests that some of what the photographers photographed may have been secret, but it does not indicate that they exposed people’s inner secrets.] So apparently, in B, [exposes the inner secrets of its subjects] means that you have to expose the deep down secret from people. So merely invading the privacy might not mean the same thing, nor does photographing sacred dances and places (it turns out that sacred does not mean inner secret...)

That's the best I can do, hope you find some of it useful.
Ilanchezhiyan
Why can't the answer for Qn. 4 be option B ? I understand it changes reality. But as the underlined excerpt from the para below suggests,
"The tourists invaded the Indians’ privacy, photographing sacred dances and places, paying the Indians to pose, and making them so self-conscious that they revised their ceremonies."
it exposed their secrets?
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Photography in Europe was largely guided by the notions of the picture 12 May 2025, 04:03
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Thank You ! I understood where I went wrong.
GMATNinja

Question 4


Ilanchezhiyan
Why can't the answer for Qn. 4 be option B ? I understand it changes reality. But as the underlined excerpt from the para below suggests,

"The tourists invaded the Indians’ privacy, photographing sacred dances and places, paying the Indians to pose, and making them so self-conscious that they revised their ceremonies."

it exposed their secrets?
(B) is tempting, but invading a group's privacy isn't necessarily the same as exposing their inner secrets. For example, photographing celebrities while on vacation certainly invades their privacy without exposing their inner secrets.

Also, invasion of privacy is only part of the author's description of photography's predatory side. There's the invasion of privacy, the direct manipulation of reality (paying the subjects to pose), and the indirect altering of reality (making them so self-conscious that they revised their ceremonies).

The fact that American photographers are altering reality, directly and indirectly, for their own benefit (getting a "goal shot") is what makes it predatory, so (A) is a better fit.

For more on (A), check out this post: https://gmatclub.com/forum/photography- ... l#p3385829.
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Photography in Europe was largely guided by the notions of the picture 13 Jul 2025, 03:27
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Hi, can anyone help explain Q1?
coreyander
Photography in Europe was largely guided by the notions of the picturesque, the important, and the beautiful. Americans, less convinced of the permanence of any basic social arrangements, experts on the “reality” of change, have more often made photography partisan. Pictures were taken not only to show what should be admired but to reveal what needs to be confronted and fixed up. American photography implies a less stable relation with history; and a relation to social reality that is both more hopeful and more predatory.

The hopeful side is exemplified in the use of photographs in America to awaken conscience. Lewis W. Hine was appointed staff photographer to the National Child Labor Committee, which was preparing to recommend legislation; his photographs of children working in mills in the 1910s helped make child labor illegal. In the case of Roy Stryker’s Farm Security Administration project, the camera was a way of “learning” about the rural poor, so the New Deal bureaucrats could figure out how to help them. But even at its most moralistic, documentary photography was always imperious in another sense. Both detached traveler’s report and the more forthright angry muckraking reflect the urge to appropriate an exotic reality. And no reality is allowed the right to resist appropriation, whether it is scandalous or beautiful or picturesque.

The predatory side of photography is at the heart of the alliance between photography and tourism. The case of the American Indians is the most brutal. Discreet, serious amateurs had been operating since the end of the Civil War; the opening wedge of an army of tourists eager for “a goal shot” of Indian life. The tourists invaded the Indians’ privacy, photographing sacred dances and places, paying the Indians to pose, and making them so self-conscious that they revised their ceremonies.

But native ceremonies that are changed by the tourists are not so different from a city scandal that is corrected because someone photographs it. In so far as the muckrakers got results, they too altered what they photographed; indeed, photographing reality was one way of altering it.


1) Which of the following sentences would most likely follow the last sentence of the passage?

A) The photographic image is only superficially realistic and depends for its effect mainly on formal relations of light and shade.
B) The photographer’s primary motive is impatience for change; his stock-in-trade is the temporary moment.
C) Photography is inimical to history, because the eye is inimical to the understanding mind.
D) A photograph cannot truly depict the object whose image it catches.
E) The photographer both loots and preserves, denounces and consecrates.

2) The passage is primarily concerned with

A) the influence of European photographers on American photographers
B) the difference between European and American photography
C) the use of photography to influence legislation
D) attitudes implicit in American photography
E) evidence provided by photography of the existence of poverty

3) Which of the following best expresses the meaning of “imperious” in the highlighted text?

A) Righteous
B) Objective
C) Exclusive
D) Royal
E) Arrogant

4) It can be inferred that the author calls photography predatory because it

A) changes the reality that the photographer studies
B) exposes the inner secrets of its subjects
C) attempts to create beautiful images to enrich the human environment
D) reduces its subjects to their momentary appearance
E) distorts the natural environment on which the photographer depends


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