{A Brief History of Photography} Artworks in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Author: Walter Benjamin
Publisher:
Publication Date: 2006-07-01
Features: Although images produced by machines lack the artistic quality of painting, they possess an absolute advantage in precision, compelling the astonished human eye to follow them uncontrollably. Moreover, their irresistible effect can simultaneously reach an incalculable number of people. Nearly a century after the invention of this machine, its revolutionary characteristics in reshaping human visual life were first recognized by Walter Benjamin, the German scholar who was among the first in the West to sense the profound transformation of human visual life since then. His writings in this area, such as The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction and A Short History of Photography, have become some of the earliest classics in the Western study of modern human visual life. This book collects both of Benjamin's classic works and includes nearly one hundred carefully selected illustrations, which are believed to be beneficial to those in the Chinese-speaking world who are concerned with the issues of art and images in the age of technology. Walter Benjamin, one of the most original thinkers of the 20th century and a key member of the Frankfurt School, was one of the few Western intellectuals of the time to fully recognize the significance of photography. His A Short History of Photography (1931) and The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936) are considered classics in photography and cultural theory, as well as essential reading for the burgeoning field of cultural studies. Unlike his Frankfurt School colleagues Adorno and Horkheimer, who held a staunch critique of mass culture and the culture industry, Benjamin's thought on the intervention of technology in the realm of art and the consequences it brought was full of paradoxes. His defensive views and perspectives on art reproduction and the culture industry also allowed him to stand out among the Frankfurt School. In A Short History of Photography and The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Benjamin focused on analyzing the profound impact of photography's emergence on modern civilization, particularly the revolutionary disruption of artistic activities. He argued that mechanical reproduction techniques, represented by photography (including film), had fundamentally changed the way humans perceive art and predicted that mechanical reproduction would ultimately dissolve the exalted status of classical art, liberating the right to art from the hands of "professionals" and making it a general right for the public. The concepts and perspectives Benjamin introduced in these two works, such as "shock experience," "the decay of the aura," and "reproduction/creation," have had a far-reaching influence on modern photographic theory and cultural theory. Jiangsu People's Publishing House has now reissued these two classic works of Benjamin, accompanied by nearly one hundred carefully selected illustrations. The translation by Mr. Cai Caiyong, based on the original German text, is even more impeccable, making the excellence and classic status of this book undeniable.