Communicative English, AK Rath, TA 2

Roll No: _________________Name: _________________________________________

Read the following texts very carefully and connect them in proper order so that the final text makes
proper sense. Use the first idea of the paragraph as a starting point to proceed with the exercise.
Use numbers in the brackets provided to change the places of sentences. Do not change the
sentences which are italicized.

In 1865, the photographer James Mudd presented a paper entitled ‘A Photographer’s Dream’ at
the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society (Photographic Section). [ 1 ] In his ‘dream’ he
was conducted through a swanky new Manchester to the ‘Grand Focus Photographic Society’. [ ]
But, whereas he had expected to find photography transformed into art, he encountered just more of
the same. [ ] This fable represents a parody of, what Mudd saw as, the dire state of photography in
the mid-19th century. [ ] Mudd tells the story of a photographer who falls asleep and wakes in the
29th century. [ ] His goal was to see photography valued as one of the fine arts (his particular
passion was for picturesque landscapes), but photographers obsessed with chemical processes and
optical devices undermined this ambition. [ ]

This simple tale proposes a period of more than 1,000 years of modern history without
photographs. [ ] Mudd was aghast to find that photography had not really changed in all this
time; still no one seemed interested in art. [ 2 ] In fact, it turned out that there had been little
opportunity for progress; he learned that, in the intervening years, photography had been lost and
had only recently been ‘discovered’. [ ] It is a remarkably interesting idea. [ ] The participants in
the Society came up with one mad scheme after another: a camera, called a pointer, wound up and
sent in search of views; steam proposed to raise photography to new heights; and so on. [ ]

William Bornefeld’s science-fiction novel Time and Light is set in a post-apocalyptic

society called Fullerton, where photographs are forbidden. [ 1 ] But, during a scientific expedition
to the (allegedly) irradiated world beyond the domed city, the central character, Dr Noreen,
discovers 12 ancient photographs from the 20th century. [ ] Noreen is rash enough to show his
images to two other citizens: gradually his promising career and social progress disintegrate around
him. [ ] Ultimately, Noreen’s search for more photographs leads him to challenge the norms and
protocols that govern Fullerton: the ruling bureaucrats respond with the ultimate iconophobic
gesture and surgically destroy his vision. [ ] In place of the seductions of images, the inhabitants
of Fullerton have the ‘pill’ (half anti-depressant, half sexual stimulant). [ ] Even during his
medical training Dr Noreen’s contact with pictures had been restricted to a few diagrams. [ ] But
when he encounters an ancient archival facility and takes a packet of images (oddly enough, all by
well-known photographers; including one by the author) he becomes obsessed with these illicit
pictures and flouts the iconophobic rule that predominates among the last surviving humans –
which Bornefeld calls, in a bad photographic joke, ‘The Family of Man’ – spending hours absorbed
in contemplating an image of peppers by Edward Weston, or Robert Capa’s picture of a Spanish
Republican soldier depicted at the moment of his death. [ ]