IELTSwithJurabek

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Passage 2.

Photography

Photography emerged as part of a cluster of technical inventions and innovations around the middle of the nineteenth century. Hailed as a great technological invention, it immediately became the subject of debates concerning its aesthetic status and social uses.

A Central to the nineteenth-century debate about the nature of photography as a new technology was the question as to how far it could be considered as art. It was celebrated for its putative ability to produce accurate images of what was in front of the camera's lens: images which were seen as being mechanically produced and thus free of the selective discriminations of the human eye and hand. On precisely the same grounds, the medium was often regarded as falling outside the realm of art as its assumed power of accurate, dispassionate recording appeared to leave no room for the artist's compositional creativity.

B Debates concerning the status of photography as art continued to take place in periodicals throughout the nineteenth century. The French poet Baudelaire linked 'the invasion of photography and the great industrial madness of today' and asserted that if photography is allowed to deputise for art in some of arts activities, it will not be long before it has supplanted or corrupted art altogether. In his view, photography's only function was to support intellectual enquiry.

C Baudelaire was not alone in this view. Absolute material accuracy was seen as the hallmark of photography, and the nineteenth-century desire to explore, record and catalogue human experience, both at home and overseas, encouraged people to emphasise photography as a method of naturalistic documentation, rather than any type of art form.

D Photographers responded to criticisms of this kind in two ways: either they accepted that photography was something different from art and sought to discover what the intrinsic properties of the medium were, or they pointed out that photography was more than a mechanical form of image-making, that it could be worked on and contrived so as to produce pictures which in some ways resembled paintings. 'Pictorial' photography from the 1850s onwards sought to overcome the problems of photography by careful arrangement of all the elements of the composition and by reducing the signifiers of technological production within the photograph. For example, they ensured that the image was somewhat blurred; they made pictures of allegorical subjects, including religious scenes, and those who worked with the gum bichromate process scratched their prints in an effort to imitate something of the appearance of a canvas.

E In the other camp were those photographers who celebrated the qualities of straight photography (with an emphasis upon direct documentary photography) and did not want to treat the medium as a kind typical of the Modern period in American monochrome painting. They were interested in photography's ability to provide apparently accurate records of the visual world and tried to give their attention on its intrinsic finish and quality.

F Photography in Britain and France was initially heralded for its technical recording abilities. With few exceptions, the emphasis was on picture-taking rather than picture-making-to echo a distinction made by Margaret Harker. She suggests that the development of the art of photography in the late 1850s can be partly accounted for through the increasing involvement of people trained as artists. They brought with them a concern for form and composition and, in particular, the use of light. Photography came to encroach very directly on genres of painting such as portraiture, not only taking over some of the work of painters, but also extending their work. For instance, while few could afford the time and cost of sitting for a painted portrait, the studio photographer could offer a similar service more cheaply. As such, portraiture became more democratically available. This did not prevent a continuing hierarchy: the painted portrait was still commissioned by the wealthy and the aristocracy. But it did allow a greater number of people the status of seeing themselves pictured.

G Furthermore, photography provoked artists to re-examine the nature and potential of paint as a particular medium. Photography appeared to be more successful than painting in capturing likenesses. It had a sense of instantaneousness that painting lacked. It has been suggested that photography encouraged Impressionist painters to experiment with manners of painting which could also capture a sense of the moment, and the passage of light. It is a truism that photography released painting from its responsibility for literal depiction, allowing it to become more experimental. However, the developing relationship between the two was considerably more symbiotic.

H Another respect in which photography may be said to have extended art was in its role as the re-presenter of art objects. It was no longer necessary to travel to Florence to see paintings of the Medics, or to Egypt to contemplate classical architecture or artefacts; you could visit an exhibition and view reproductions.

Read the text and answer questions 27-40

The long view

Climate change, moon bases, cybercrime we all know the predictions, but how are they made? One expert explains the science of futurology

The business of predicting the future has a long history. Several millennia ago in ancient Greece, people would consult Apollo, the god of prophecy, to learn if fortune favoured their chosen course of action. The tradition has changed considerably since then. Today, futurology is a science that drives a thriving business – its three main consumers being the military, big business and national governments. Modern futurists do not predict that a certain event will occur at a particular time. Instead they look at what is happening now to see what this may lead to further down the line. Alternatively, they start with a desired result and work out how people and organisations can be manoeuvred into realising that ambition.

The oil company Shell has been one of the major producers of future studies. It recently published a comprehensive study looking at how people may live in 2020 and 2050, given the type of energy which is purchased. Philip Watts from Shell says, ‘This is not an exercise in prophecy. Rather it is designed to challenge our thinking so that we can make better choices in today’s business world.’

The short-term attitudes and bureaucracy of many government can be frustrating to futurists, but this mutual wariness is slowly changing. The Scottish Parliament recently hosted a conference of 150 futurists form across the globe. The parliament is setting up a forum to look at where Scotland is heading in the next 20 years. Among the issue are demographics and economic competition within Europe and with Asia. It’s a first for the United Kingdom, although not for Europe - this strategy has already been put into practice in Finland.

Eamonn Kelly, head of the San Francisco-based Global Business Network futurist group, was one of those who attended the conference. According to Kelly, 'There are many different tools a futurist can employ but essentially there are three main ingredients. First, there is the ‘science’, which can encompass everything from environmental studies to psychology. Then, there is the 'craft', which may include interviews and the creation of maps of cause and effect. Finally, there is the 'art', the intuitive ability to meld all this into a coherent whole.'

Dr Jame Canton is founder of the San Francisco-based Institute for Global Futures and has been an adviser to leading US companies. Like many futurists he started in the private sector but is also comfortable in academia and has an urge to change things for the better. 'A futurist is an alchemist who mixes the qualitative,' he says. ‘He needs intuition and has to work with people from a range of academic backgrounds gathering primary evidence about what motivates people. Futurists are constantly discussing ideas with their peers, but they do not simply surf the net picking up on the latest fad.’

New Zealand futurist Robin Gunston says, ‘I don’t believe you can train yourself to become futurist. A certain amount of this is to do with how your brain is hard-wired and we know this is difficult to change. Futurology requires extensive life experience and a broad education to test theories against. Much of modern teenage culture is about me, what I want and what the world owes me - that does not make it easy to see different kinds of futures and pose the hard questions about how we will get there.’

Those best able to respond to futurists are the most agile. ‘Large corporations beholden to shareholders and governments burdened by bureaucracy are often simply too slow. Asian companies tend to be better prepared because they take a longer perspective. Sony, for example is very forward looking,’ Canton says. ‘There will be sunset and sunrise nations and corporations, in terms of prosperity in the 21st century. The winners will be those corporations and governments which conduct future studies and take steps to become future-proofed.’

According to Alan Beckley, a former West Mercia chief inspector and past president of the Police Futurists International (PFI), getting public bodies in the UK future-proofed could be a long process. ‘People are concerned about the methodology and the reliability of future studies,’ he says. They are more likely to follow their political masters than go to them and say. 'We have done this scenario, and this is what we should do.' However, as the Scottish Parliament has shown, there are a few examples of government exercises. Also, in 2003 Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) published for the first time its strategic thinking for the next decade. This document was drawn up with the help if in-house and outside futurists. FCO minister Bill Rammell says, ‘We do occasionally look further ahead than the next ten years on issues such as demographics. But the period chosen for the strategy was deliberately a decade. Even assumptions about technology get very shaky beyond that.’

American futurist Steve Brant stresses the importance of remembering that the road ahead has yet to be chosen. ‘People can create the future they want using various points of leverage,’ he says. ‘We have much more influence over what the future will be like than many of us realise.’ Futurists used to be like firefighters - they tried to work out what to do if things went wrong. Now, the aim of this profession is to imagine the best possible future for society and start creating it today.