Please read Susan Sontag’s article, America, Seen Through Photographs, Darkly and look at the images connected to the article on the worksheet page, then answer the following questions.

Explain what Sontag means when she writes that Walker Evans’s photos “confer importance” and democratize their subjects by "leveling up."

In Sontag’s view, how were the MOMA exhibitions, The Family of Man and the retrospective of Diane Arbus’s work different?  What differences in American culture during the 1950s and American culture during the 1970s do these shows reflect?

According to Sontag, how did Diane Arbus choose her subjects?  Do you think that the people who posed for Arbus’s camera saw themselves in the way that the photographer saw them, or the way we do now?  Explain.

Do you think that Arbus’s photos are culturally insensitive, or that her art is re-humanizing the previously dehumanized? How and why? Use at least three specific examples from her photographs to support your position.