(单词翻译:单击)
For 180-years, people have been asking the question: is photography art? At an early meeting of the Photographic Society of London, established in 1853, one of the members complained that the new technique was "too literal to compete with works of art" because it was unable to "elevate the imagination". This conception of photography as a mechanical recording medium never fully died away. Even by the 1960s and 70s, art photography – the idea that photographs could capture more than just surface appearances – was, in the words of the photographer Jeff Wall.
180年以来人们一直在追问这样一个问题：摄影是艺术吗？在成立于1853年的早期伦敦摄影学会会议上，一个会员抱怨说，这项新技术是“太表面以至于不能和艺术作品相竞争”，因为它“无法提升想象”。摄影作为一种机械记录的媒介的概念从未完全消失。即使是20世纪六七十年代，在摄影师杰夫•沃尔的语言里，艺术摄影即拍摄的照片可以捕捉到更多表面之外的东西。
But over the past few decades the question has been heard with ever decreasing frequency. When Andreas Gursky's photograph of a grey river Rhine under an equally colourless sky sold for a world record price of £2.7 million last year, the debate was effectively over. As if to give its own patrician signal of approval, the National Gallery is now holding its first major exhibition of photography, Seduced by Art: Photography Past and Present.
但是，在过去的几十年里这个问题并没有减少出现的频率。当安德烈亚斯•古尔斯基的照片同样灰色天空下的灰色莱茵河去年卖了270万英镑的世界纪录，辩论有力地结束了。好像是为了给自己的贵族标志一个批准，国家美术馆举办了第一次大型摄影展，被艺术所牵引：摄影的过去与现在。
同样灰色天空下的灰色莱茵河
The show is not a survey but rather examines how photography's earliest practitioners looked to paintings when they were first exploring their technology's potential, and how their modern descendants are looking both to those photographic old masters and in turn to the old master paintings.
该展览不是调查，而是探讨当他们第一次探索其技术的潜能时摄影的早期从业者如何看待绘画，以及他们的现代后人如何看待那些摄影过去的从业者进而转到以往的大师绘画。
What paintings offered was a catalogue of transferable subjects, from portraits to nudes, still lifes to landscapes,that photographers could mimic and adapt. Because of the lengthy exposures necessary for early cameras, moving subjects were impossible to capture.
绘画提供的主题是摄影师可以模拟和调整的从人像到裸体、从静物到风景的一览表。由于早期相机需要长曝光，移动的物体是不可能捕捉到的。
What some pioneering photographers recognised straight away was that photographs, like paintings, are artificially constructed portrayals: they too had to be carefully composed, lit and produced.
一些先锋摄影师马上认识到，照片就像绘画，是人工进行的描绘：他们也必须小心构图、按快门以及制作。
If early photographers had no option but to negotiate their own engagement with painting their modern descendants can call on nearly two centuries of photographic history. It is a point the exhibition makes by combining old and new.
如果早期摄影师除了只能自己争取与绘画一样获得一席之位外别无选择，那么现在的后人就可以要求近两个世纪的摄影史。这是此次展览通过新老结合而形成的意义。
This exhibition lays out what photography's founding father could never know: how the camera has also always been the pencil of art.
本次展览中提出了摄影之父可能永远不会知道的事情：怎样做到摄像机也一直是一支艺术之笔。
