What does walter Benjamin think of photography?
In his essay A Short History of Photography (1931), Walter Benjamin did not seek to chronicle the development of photography; rather, he contemplated the important consequences of the invention of photography for the global culture: “At about the same time as the formation of the technology for reproduction, the …
What is the main point of Walter Benjamin’s article?
“The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1935), by Walter Benjamin, is an essay of cultural criticism which proposes and explains that mechanical reproduction devalues the aura (uniqueness) of an objet d’art.
Who is Walter Benjamin photography?
Walter Benjamin was a German philosopher who was interested in the new technology of photography and filmmaking. Marxist cultural/literary critic and philosopher, his writings associated with the Frankfurt School of social theorist such as Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer.
What does Walter Benjamin describe the film camera?
Benjamin further elaborates on film’s creation of spectacle. He explains that a spectator watching the process of filming (rather than the film itself) could only avoid seeing the tools of film production by looking through the lens of the camera itself. Benjamin reads this phenomenon in terms of rhetorical distance.
What does Walter Benjamin think about film?
Film, according to Walter Benjamin, is perceived in a state of distraction – and a collective one at that. His problem with collective distraction stems from the political backdrop that surrounds his experience of art and education.
What is Walter Benjamin’s theory?
According to Benjamin, each idea is ‘original’ and ideas in general are a multiplicity. The experience of ‘truth’, in contrast to the accumulation of knowledge, is almost a mystical experience. It is something in which one is totally immersed, losing intention.
What is Walter Benjamin famous for?
Walter Benjamin, (born July 15, 1892, Berlin, Ger. —died Sept. 27?, 1940, near Port-Bou, Spain), man of letters and aesthetician, now considered to have been the most important German literary critic in the first half of the 20th century.
What is Walter Benjamin theory?
What is Walter Benjamin known for?
Among Benjamin’s best known works are the essays “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1935), and “Theses on the Philosophy of History” (1940). His major work as a literary critic included essays on Baudelaire, Goethe, Kafka, Kraus, Leskov, Proust, Walser, and translation theory.
Why was Walter Benjamin so important to photography?
Technical expertise is obviously the tool of the pioneer in this field. The illiterates of the future will be the people who know nothing of photography rather than those who are ignorant of the art of writing.” Walter Benjamin was one of the most important thinkers of the 20 th century, having published a range of works on culture and society.
Who is the author of a short history of photography?
The anthology includes three works by German philosopher, critic, writer, and translator Walter Benjamin, which speculate on photography: A Short History of Photography; Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century; and The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.
What did Walter Benjamin say about illiterates of the future?
Benjamin – who felt “The illiterates of the future will be the people who know nothing of photography rather than those who are ignorant of the art of writing” – actively encouraged Freund’s joint pursuit of photography and art history.
Where did Walter Benjamin take his own life?
Having reached the Franco-Spanish border town of Portbou he was mistakenly told by a border official that he would be turned over to the Gestapo. In despair, Benjamin took his own life.