On Photography

Walter Benjamin’s exploration of art under capitalism is foundational for many modern scholars’ writing on photography. In his seminal essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Benjamin explored the consequences of industrial reproduction on art and images. He concluded that people came to treat art and images like any other commodity because of the ability to reproduce them at a whim—cheap, meaningless items to consume—and that the large-scale reproductive capacity of film and photography removed works of art from their “unique” context of era and place. In addition, Benjamin believed that mechanical reproduction robbed artwork—and experiences—of their authenticity, or “aura,” subjugating their idiosyncratic existence in historical and spatial contexts. Thus, the free-floating art propagated via the “Age of Mechanical Reproduction” turned art objects into easily consumable packets of entertainment and knowledge. Benjamin linked this radical shift in people’s relationship to art and experience to the rise of fascism in 19th-century Europe. He hoped that art could be salvaged by charging it with politicization to resist the appropriation of art objects for mere aesthetic value, which he saw as resulting from fascist influence. In Benjamin’s unfinished magnum opus, The Arcades Project, he explores the birth of photography in 19th-century Paris, reinforcing many of the thoughts and ideas that he first laid out in “The Work of Art.”

Benjamin’s ideas are invaluable for cultural critiques of photography such as On Photography. Sontag’s work relies on many of Benjamin’s frameworks, terminology, and approaches to consumerist, highly reproducible artforms. In these respects, Sontag’s essays are a direct continuation of Benjamin’s work. On Photography is thus an extension of Benjamin’s exploration of photography’s impact on American culture and vice versa.