【单选题】

The earliest controversies about the relationship between photography and art centered on whether photographer’s fidelity to appearances and dependence on a machine allowed it to be a fine art (1) distinctive from merely a practical art. Throughout the nineteenth century, the defense of photography was identical with the (2) to establish it as a fine art. (3) the charge that photographers was a soulless mechanical duplication of (4) , photographers (5) that it was instead a privileged (6) of seeing, a revolt against commonplace vision, and (7) worthy an art than painting.

Ironically, (8) photography is securely established as a fine art, many photographers find it pretentious or (9) to label it as such. Serious photographers are no longer willing to (10) whether photography is not involved with art, (11) to proclaim that their own work is not involved with it. This shows the extent (12) which they simply take for granted the concept of art imposed by the (13) of Modernism: the better the art, the more subversive it is of the traditional aims of art.
Photographers’ disclaimers of any interest in making art tell us more about the troubled status of the contemporary (14) of art (15) about whether photography is or is not art. Photography, (16) Pop painting, reassures viewers that art is not hard; photography seems to be more about its subjects than about art.
Photography, (17) , has developed all the (18) and self-consciousness of a classic Modernist art. Many professionals privately have begun to worry that the (19) of photography as an activity subversive of the traditional pretensions of art has gone so far that the public will forget that photography is a distinctive and exalted activity-- (20) , an art.
A．intend
B．wish
C．plea
D．struggle