Walter Benjamin
[Philosopher, critic, and theorist, b. 1892, Berlin, d. 1940, Port Bou, France.]
One might say that our most profound moments have been furnished, like some cigarette packages, with a little image, a photograph of ourselves. And that “whole life” which, as we often hear, passes before the dying or people in danger of dying, is composed precisely of those tiny images.
Only the future has developers at its disposal that are strong enough to bring forth the image in all its details.
One might generalize by saying: the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own particular situation, it reactivates the object reproduced. These two processes lead to a tremendous shattering of tradition which is the obverse of the contemporary crisis and renewal of mankind. Both processes are intimately connected with the contemporary mass movements...
Just as lithography virtually implied the illustrated newspaper, so did photography foreshadow the sound film [because,] since the eye perceives more swiftly than the hand can draw, the process of pictorial reproduction was accelerated so enormously that it could keep pace with speech.
The enlargement of a snapshot does not simply render more precise what in any case was visible, though unclear: it reveals entirely new structural formations of the subject.
The [slowness of early glass plate procedures] caused the subject to focus his life in the moment rather than hurrying on past it; during the considerable period of exposure, the subject (as it were) grew into the picture, in the sharpest contrast with appearances in a snapshot.
To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility. From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the “authentic” print makes no sense. But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice—politics.
The invention of the match around the middle of the nineteenth century brought forth a number of innovations which have one thing in common: one abrupt movement of the hand triggers a process of many steps... Of the countless movements of switching, inserting, pressing, and the like, the “snapping” of the photographer has had the greatest consequences... The camera gave the moment a posthumous shock, as it were.
