From a critical discussion of the work of Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron.
What Cameron called her "fancy-subject" pictures—photographs in which two or more costumed sitters enacted, under Cameron's direction, scenes from the Bible, mythology, Shakespeare, or Tennyson—bear unmistakable traces of the often comical conditions under which they were taken. In many respects they have more connection to the family album pictures of recalcitrant relatives who have been herded together for the obligatory group picture than they do to the masterpieces of Western painting. In Raphael and Giotto there are no infant Christs whose faces are blurred because they moved, or who are looking at the viewer with frank hatred. These traces, of course, are what give the photographs their life and charm. If Cameron had succeeded in her project of making seamless works of illustrative art, her work would be among the curiosities of Victorian photography—like Oscar Gustave Rejlander's extravagantly awful The Two Ways of Life—rather than among its most vital images.
It is precisely the camera's realism—its stubborn obsession with the surface of things—that has given Cameron's theatricality and artificiality its atmosphere of truth. …
What gives Cameron's pictures of actors their special quality—their status as treasures of photography of an unfathomably peculiar sort—is their singular combination of amateurism and artistry. …
Which one of the following most accurately expresses the main point of the passage?
The circumstances under which Cameron's fancy-subject pictures were taken render them unintentionally comical.
Although this is supported, this isn’t the overall point. The overall point concerns how the amateurish features of Cameron’s pictures, combined with their artistry, make the pictures interesting. The fact that pictures are comical is part of the amateurish nature of the works.
The peculiar charm of Cameron's fancy-subject pictures derives from the viewer's simultaneous awareness of the fictional scene portrayed and the circumstances of its portrayal.
This is the closest match to the idea that
The implicit claim of Cameron's fancy-subject pictures to comparison with the masterpieces of Western painting is undermined by the obtrusiveness of the sitters.
This is too critical of Cameron’s work. The overall point isn’t that Cameron’s work isn’t comparable to the masterpieces of Western painting. The point is that there are certain features in Cameron’s work that make them interesting.
The most successful of Cameron's fancy-subject pictures from an aesthetic point of view are those in which the viewer is completely unaware that the sitters are engaged in role playing.
The author never identifies the “most successful” pictures as those in which a viewer is “completely unaware” of the sitters’ role-playing.
The interest of Cameron's fancy-subject pictures consists in what they tell us about the sitters and not in the imaginary scenes they portray.
The author never singles out the sitters as the only interesting aspect of Cameron’s pictures.
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