God's Eyes: The Philosophy of Photography

Author: Walter Benjamin
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-12-01
Features: This book can be said to introduce the history of visual culture behind and around the camera. Those long-standing issues surrounding photography—such as the art, philosophy, and aesthetics of photography, its ideology, the "way of seeing" in photography, and photography's relationship with colonialism—have become surrounded by the "aura" in Benjamin's "Age of Mechanical Reproduction." In the works of thinkers like Bourdieu, John Berger, Susan Sontag, and others, photography has revealed a "scene of survival" concerning human gaze and images, exerting a profound influence on the history of society and culture. This book can be considered a river of thought on "photographic culture." As Socrates said, "One cannot step into the same river twice," and as the brilliance of "photography" has not faded, this book is also a commemoration and tribute.