Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,

¶ … Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," Walter Benjamin attempts to describe how the advent of industrialization has changed the way art is produced, transmitted, and received, and the effect these changes have had on the notion of art itself. Benjamin's argument centers around the notion of a work's "aura," or "the unique appearance of a distance," meaning the unique, individual experience of a work in time and space that cannot be reproduced in the same way that the work itself can (Benjamin 2004: 795). In order to better understand Benjamin's notion of aura and the way photography, film, and other reproduced images contribute to its decay, one may consider an image of Benjamin himself as a case study in changes produced by the mechanical reproduction of art.

When Benjamin talks about "distance," he is referring to distance not only in terms of space, but also time, because the particular historical context and origin of a work of art prior to the age of mechanical reproduction contributes to its aura in the same way that its distance does, with the only difference being that the viewer perceives the temporal distance somewhat less directly than the physical distance. Because a work's aura is dependent on, and in some ways made up by "its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be," mechanical reproduction cannot help but diminish it, as reproduction simultaneously unmoors the image from its original time and space (Benjamin 2004: 793). This is actually how Benjamin introduces and formulates the concept of aura; namely, by identifying it as the thing that mechanical reproduction destroys or diminishes.

After initially describing the concept of aura, Benjamin goes on to describe it relationship to the use and utility of art, and it is here where the discussion becomes most interesting, because Benjamin demonstrates how the loss of aura is not merely a question of artistic snobbery or a desire for a lost tradition, but rather hints at a more fundamental change in the way art functions and influences society. Benjamin notes that over the course of human history, art went through a transition from being primarily a magical or shamanic tool to being valued as an art in and of itself (Benjamin 2004: 795-798). In the former case, art was appreciated primarily for its "cult value," but this changed as methods of production changed (Benjamin 2004: 795). In a similar way, the mechanical reproduction of art has precipitated another change in the use and value of art, because as a work's cult value decreases along with its aura, its "exhibition value" increases, precisely because the work can now be exhibited in any time or space (Benjamin 2004: 798).

To see this process in action, one may consider a photograph of Benjamin himself, taken by Gisele Freund in 1937, at the National Library in Paris, France. In his own analysis of Benjamin's work Subhash Jaireth examines this photo alongside a painted portrait of Benjamin in order to discuss the intertextuality of works in the age of mechanical reproduction, and his argument that images now "quote and cite each other" is informative (Jaireth 2003: 36). In the same way that two portraits of Benjamin might quote and cite each other, reproductions themselves serve the same purpose, because they each serve to reaffirm and comment on the simultaneously identical and individual nature of each reproduction; that is to say, in the same way that "the meaning of each single picture appears to be prescribed the sequence of all preceding ones in a film," each reproduction of an image affirms the "legitimacy" of every other reproduction while citing the authenticity of the original (Benjamin 2004: 798).

In the photo, Benjamin is seated as a desk, writing something as he pores over a book. He is immediately identifiable for anyone who has seen him before, because his characteristic hair and mustache are evident even though his face is turned down to the page. Were this image a painting, and the original painting at that, it would retain some sense of aura because the particular time and place of the image's content, as well as the image itself, would be evident. The painting itself would be directly entwined with the time and space of the National Library in 1937, but because the image is a photo, there is no such connection.

This is true even if one attempts to go all the way back to the "original" image, because even then one cannot ever reach a clearly legible original; there is no original photograph, except for perhaps the original negative, but even then it is a negative, a direct inversion of the light reflected off of everything being photographed, and when viewed this negative produces an entirely different aesthetic experience than that of a developed, printed photo. Instead, the "original" scene loses its unique aura and is instead replaced by the multiplicity of reproductions, such that the true physical (and temporal) existence of Walter Benjamin a la Bibliotheque nationale cannot be found in any one time or place, but rather spread out infinitely across every reproduction, including the version attached to this very essay. Thus, the spacial and temporal distance that may have existed disappears, because the image can almost literally be anywhere at anytime, and the ubiquity allowed by the internet and digital reproduction only confirms what Benjamin had to say about mechanical reproduction. The camera brings things closer precisely by demolishing time, space, and the value of an "original."