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Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin observes that the reproducibility of art is a consequence of the advances of productive capitalist society, and that the cultural and political interest of its consequences should not be underestimated. Benjamin's main observation is correct and extremely important. Benjamin uses classic Marxist style with his opening observations. However, they are explicit, not hidden, and do not influence his main analysis of the consequences of the reproducibility of art, and should rather be seen as a form of intellectual honesty and openness. Benjamin acknowledges the strong influence that reproductive society has on our perception of culture. He considers the influence of photography on art as dominant compared to the influence of art on photography. (Walter, B. 1936)   Theodor Adorno similar to Benjamin was a philosopher, critic, and theorist who generated a vast body of works on aspects of society and culture believed that the "culture industry" turned everyone into consumers and foreclosed the possibility of thought and heterogeneity. (Zuideraart, 2003) Benjamin takes a different approach, relevant to us in our post 9/11 crisis culture where homogeneity is spread by reducing the world to a struggle between democracy and terror.

Benjamin in his essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction observes that though reproducibility of artworks such as casting, stamping, woodcuts, movable type, engraving, etching, lithography has been known for a long time. With the advent of photography, reproduction in detail was vastly accelerated, with minimal effort. Today with the introduction of digital photography and digital transmission networks such as the Internet mass reproduction of culture has accelerated enormously.

Photographs represent a fundamentally different way of seeing than do paintings. A photograph is a slice of the time space continuum. It has a left and right, a top and a bottom and is flat. It has a documentary...