Response to Benjamin

Benjamin’s essay written in 1937 shows the trepidation felt towards the onset of new and complex technology and its implications on the art world and more so on arts reception or absorption by its audience.


The camera is shown as the instigator for this new relationship between art and its viewer. Photography had begun to influence the art world more and more, and the arrival of film further complicated this relationship. Benjamin shows that how relate to the artist or actor is dislocated with the interjection of the camera. This technical mediation of reality complicates the audience’s relation to how the artists subject is portrayed or how the actor portrays his character. He shows that the camera allows image production that shows unconscious ways of seeing, and that the images produced are not done as consciously as those of a painter. This mechanical reproductability of reality through an image eliminates the aura: “that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art.” (I understand the aura as the essence or an art works unique existence at the hand of the artist).


Although I see valid and interesting comments in Benjamin’s essay, it is hard, on a personal level, to fully understand the social context in which it was written. Photography, film and the camera have become so saturated into our daily life that it is hard to understand the somewhat terrified stance that Benjamin seemed to take. I see the camera as a tool for us now, a way to heighten how a director or artist can control the way their audience sees. Although in instances such as photojournalism, this greater ability of control can skew or manipulate reality in a negative way (as seen in Campbell’s “Horrific Blindness” text), in the realm of the art world it can be welcomed as a way to further our artistic intentions. This can be said of film in the same way, the director now has an unparalleled ability to tell his story to the receiving audience.


Working within the post-modern aesthetic, it is more valid to increase this displacement of reality to a more constructed space and allow ourselves to control reality for our artistic intents. Michael Kohler wrote of the basic aesthetics of modern photography in a recent essay and described the aesthetic in the following way: “The creative achievement of the photo artist is measured according to his ability to undermine the traditional claim of the camera image to “truth”, “objectivity” and “realism” – and to give it the character of an “autonomous” pictorial object instead.” (p16).


It seems that we have now accepted the infiltration of mechanical reproduction into the art world and are constructing strategies to utilise this technology for the purpose of innovation and progress.





Kohler, Michael. “Arranged, Constructed and Staged”. Constructed Realities: The Art of Staged Photography. New York: Edition Stemmle. 1995: 15-20.


Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”. Reprinted in Durham, M.G. & Kellner D. Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks. Oxford: Blackwell. 2001: 48-70.