Chapter 36 — Quiz

Twenty-six self-check questions on the history of photography — the chemical era, the document-vs-art tension, the masters and movements, the three waves of democratization, the digital revolution, and the phone era. A few are seeing questions: you will read a Described Photograph and place it in history. Answer before checking the key at the end. Aim to explain your reasoning, not just pick a letter — history is a tool for making decisions, and the reasoning is where the tool lives.

Multiple choice

Q1. The word photography and the medium's first practical process date to roughly which decade? - A) the 1790s - B) the 1830s - C) the 1880s - D) the 1920s

Q2. What made the daguerreotype a dead end for photography as a mass medium, despite its sharpness? - A) it required electricity - B) it produced a unique image with no negative, so it could not be copied - C) it could only render landscapes - D) it faded within days

Q3. Which technical advance most directly turned photography into a reproducible mass medium? - A) the small aperture - B) color film - C) the negative (calotype, then wet plate and roll film) - D) the camera phone

Q4. "You press the button, we do the rest" (1888) is associated with which development? - A) wet-plate collodion - B) the daguerreotype - C) roll film and the simple box camera - D) the digital sensor

Q5. Pictorialism (c.1890–1915) tried to win photography the status of art by: - A) embracing the camera's sharpness and minimal manipulation - B) making photographs look like soft-focus paintings, with hand-work and atmosphere - C) photographing only the poor and dispossessed - D) shooting exclusively in color

Q6. Straight photography reversed Pictorialism by arguing that photography's art lies in: - A) hiding the machine behind heavy darkroom manipulation - B) embracing the medium's own nature — sharp focus, full tonal range, honest framing, good seeing - C) abandoning the negative - D) the speed of the snapshot above all else

Q7. Group f/64 is named for an aperture because the group prized: - A) shallow depth of field and dreamy backgrounds - B) maximum front-to-back sharpness and full tonal range - C) fast shutter speeds for action - D) low-light sensitivity

Q8. The "decisive moment," as a historical idea, is best defined as: - A) the moment a film is developed - B) the fraction of a second when a scene's geometry and an event's meaning align, then dissolve - C) the decision to buy a better camera - D) the golden-hour window for landscapes

Q9. The Farm Security Administration photographs (Dorothea Lange among the photographers) belong to which tradition? - A) Pictorialism - B) the New Color - C) the documentary tradition — the camera as social conscience - D) the studio portrait

Q10. "The New Color" refers to: - A) the invention of color film in the 1930s - B) the embrace, from roughly the 1970s, of color as a serious art medium finding poetry in the ordinary - C) a brand of photographic paper - D) the color-grading tools in modern software

Q11. Across the chapter, every democratizing wave (snapshot, color, digital, phone) provoked the same complaint from the established generation. What was it? - A) "the prints fade too quickly" - B) "now that anyone can do it, it isn't real photography anymore" - C) "the colors are inaccurate" - D) "it's too expensive for most people"

Q12. The digital revolution changed many things about photography but pointedly did not change: - A) the cost per frame - B) the four decisions — light, moment, frame, focus — i.e. the seeing - C) how quickly you can review an image - D) whether you can change ISO between frames

Q13. "Changeable ISO" was quietly transformative because, unlike the film era, it let you: - A) develop your own film at home - B) change sensitivity every single frame, moving from bright sun to a dark interior on consecutive shots - C) print larger - D) shoot in color

Q14. What is described as genuinely new about the camera-phone era, as opposed to a continuation of earlier trends? - A) that cameras got smaller - B) the combination — a capable camera always present, wired to a global audience, backed by computational photography - C) that photographs are made of light - D) that photographers compose with a viewfinder

Q15. The chapter argues the feed "optimizes for the opposite of what makes a photograph last." This means the feed rewards: - A) the slow, quiet image that rewards repeated looking - B) the instantly legible, thumb-stopping image seen for a fraction of a second - C) only black-and-white work - D) only professionally printed work

Q16. Which two gallery masters are described in the chapter as opposites who are nonetheless both "straight photography"? - A) Lange and Avedon - B) Adams (planned, monumental) and Cartier-Bresson (seized, quicksilver) - C) Adams and Lange - D) Avedon and Cartier-Bresson

True / False — with justification

For each, mark True or False and write one sentence defending your answer.

Q17. The daguerreotype produced a negative from which many prints could be made.

Q18. Wet-plate collodion had to be coated, exposed, and developed while the plate was still wet, which is why field photographers carried a portable darkroom.

Q19. Serious art photography embraced color immediately upon its availability in the 1930s.

Q20. This book is, philosophically, written in the straight-photography tradition.

Q21. The technological history of photography is a story of pure progress, with each step strictly better than the last in every way.

Short answer

Q22. In two or three sentences, explain the "pendulum" between document and art (Figure 36.2), and give one decision a photographer makes today that slides them along that line.

Q23. The chapter calls the four decisions "the riverbed" and the technology "the river." Explain what that metaphor claims about 185 years of photographic history.

Q24. Name the three waves of democratization in order, and state in a few words what each one democratized.

Seeing questions — place it in history

Q25. Read this Described Photograph and answer below.

FIGURE Q36.1 — "Wet street, neon, one figure"      [constructed teaching example]
  THE FRAME    A rain-slicked city street at night; a lone figure crosses mid-frame, caught mid-stride.
               A red neon sign and a green traffic light smear into long reflections on the wet asphalt,
               filling the foreground with saturated color.
  THE LIGHT    Mixed artificial light — neon, signage, a streetlamp — pooling in the wet road; bold,
               colored, directional, the colors themselves doing the emotional work.
  THE MOMENT   The figure's foot is just above its own reflection; one instant earlier or later and the
               mirrored doubling would break.
  THE CHOICES  Color emphasized in processing; the figure placed where the reflections frame it; shutter
               fast enough to freeze the stride.

(a) This frame draws on two of the chapter's traditions at once — name both, with the visual clue for each. (b) If you removed all the color and shot it in black and white, which tradition would it lean toward, and which would it lose?

Q26. Read this Described Photograph and answer below.

FIGURE Q36.2 — "Kitchen table, ordinary Tuesday"      [constructed teaching example]
  THE FRAME    A cluttered kitchen table shot slightly from above: a half-eaten breakfast, a child's hand
               reaching in from the edge, a cut-off head, a coffee ring on the newspaper. Casual, unposed,
               a little crooked.
  THE LIGHT    Flat, even morning light from the window — unremarkable, just enough.
  THE MOMENT   No "decisive" instant — an ordinary, in-between second of family life.
  THE CHOICES  Phone, full auto, made quickly without much arrangement; the artlessness is the point.

(a) Which historical tradition does this frame most embody, and what two visual clues tell you? (b) The chapter says this tradition "democratized" photography in two senses — name both and connect them to this specific image.

Answer Key

Topics to review by question

• Q1–Q4, Q17–Q18: the chemical era — daguerreotype, the negative, wet plate, roll film (§36.1).
• Q5–Q6, Q20, Q22: document vs. art; Pictorialism and straight photography (§36.2).
• Q7–Q9, Q16, Q25, Q26: the masters and movements; the Master Image Gallery in context (§36.3).
• Q10–Q11, Q19, Q24, Q26: color, the snapshot, and democratization (§36.4).
• Q12–Q13, Q21, Q23: the digital revolution and the trade-off framing (§36.5).
• Q14–Q15, Q23: the phone, the feed, and the present (§36.6).