See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/306111201

Walter Benjamin on Instagram in the age of digital reproduction

Working Paper · August 2016

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.1806.6169

CITATION READS

1 2,220

1 author:

Michael David Sankey

Charles Darwin University
92 PUBLICATIONS   540 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

ASCILITE Community Mentoring Program View project

Constructive alignment View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Michael David Sankey on 16 August 2016.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

Walter Benjamin on Instagram in the age of digital reproduction | Michael Sankey | Pulse | LinkedIn 16/08/2016 1:40 pm

Search for people, jobs, companies, and more... Advanced

Home Profile My Network Jobs Interests Business Services Try Premium for free

Michael Sankey

Walter Benjamin on Instagram in the age

of digital reproduction Edit post

Published on August 16, 2016

Michael Sankey 1 0 1
Director, Learning Environments and Media at Universi…

On this the 80 year anniversary (contestably) of German philosopher Walter Benjamin’s

classic piece, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, I have been
prompted to reflect on this work with a slightly different lens; what he may have made
of the age of digital reproduction and of things like Instagram.

Interestingly, 1936 also saw the advent of the first real 35mm single lens reflex camera
(SLR), the Ihagee Kine Exakta, in Germany; although prototypes of this had been in
existence since as early as 1934. Regardless, this must have been a pretty exciting time
for the emerging photographic arts community. I could imagine there would have been
quite a buzz around the freedom this innovation would have allow, not unlike the
freedom the smart phone camera have allowed more recently.

On the other hand, those in the 1930’s who had been using land cameras and medium
format cameras were aghast, lamenting the lack of quality of these smaller cameras, and
suggesting that this would be the end of the craft as they knew it. Of course, with any
innovation like this there are always the naysayers running not far behind. Not unlike
when digital photography started to make a real insurgence in the 1990’s. I remember
well the words of William Mitchell, in his book ‘The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in
the Post-Photographic Era’ when he wrote:

“Today, as we enter the post-photographic era, we must face once again the

http://www.linkedin.com/pulse/walter-benjamin-instagram-age-digital-reproduction-michael-sankey Page 1 of 7
Walter Benjamin on Instagram in the age of digital reproduction | Michael Sankey | Pulse | LinkedIn 16/08/2016 1:40 pm

ineradicable fragility of our ontological

distinctions between the imaginary and
the real, and the tragic elusiveness of the
Cartesian dream…” (Mitchell, 1992,
P.225)

Oh, but the Cartesian dream (think

Descartes) is very much alive and well, and
has now been brought back to life by
photography (not that it ever died), as our
dreams are made active. For as Rene
Descartes writes in ‘Meditations On First
Philosophy’ (translated):

“Whatever I have up till now accepted as

most true and assured I have gotten
either from the senses or through the
senses. But from time to time I have found that the senses deceive, and it is prudent
never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once”.

Never have so many images been created and

distributed; freed by the democratization of
the photographic art. Sure it’s not the same,
but hey that’s life, and some of you may even
remember having to taking your exposed film
to the camera store and then have to wait
before you could see your pictures.
Unthinkable today.

Just 8 years on from Mitchell’s book, by the

year 2000, the digital camera market had
reached annual sales of some $10 billion dollars (Tripsas & Gavetti, 2000) and for the
first time had supplanted film cameras in the market. Canon had also just released it
EOS D30 camera, which had in it the first complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor
sensor; which ultimately made purchasing a digital SLR relatively affordable,
particularly for the advanced amateur.

In June 2016 Instagram had some 500 million active users (DMS 2016), more than the
combined population of Eastern and Western Europe and the UK at the time Benjamin
was writing his essay. In fact there are more than 20 Billion photos stored on the
Instagram database, with a further 60 million photos now being shared everyday. From
a slightly different perspective, in 2016, we have also seen for the first time, the sale of
digital content out perform the traditional print based sales of academic textbooks
(Chicago Sun-Times, 2016)

http://www.linkedin.com/pulse/walter-benjamin-instagram-age-digital-reproduction-michael-sankey Page 2 of 7
Walter Benjamin on Instagram in the age of digital reproduction | Michael Sankey | Pulse | LinkedIn 16/08/2016 1:40 pm

But I digress; let’s get back to Benjamin and what he might have though about things
like Instagram. Benjamin of course was a Western Marxist, hence objected to the
powers of capitalism as outworked by the Proletariat. But what could epitomize
capitalist production more than Facebook (the owner of Instagram), or does it? The
image (photographic or other) of course has often been used as a weapon both for and
against the Proletariat. It is one way in which the masses can have a voice and
communicate dissent, and even more so today. A simple example of this may be seen by
looking at the hashtags #australiancensus or #census2016 on Instagram, after the recent
failure of the Australian Bureau of Statistics to fully prevent a recent cyber attack on the
Australian Census website. This is only highlighted further by the fact that these images
are now so much more reproducible and syndicatable. So maybe Instagram (and by
extension Facebook) has given us more of a voice against the Proletariat.

In Benjamin’s day, the only way to see an image was in its printed form. The more
traditional image was reproduced by way of lithography and this had only recently been
usurped by the ‘truth’ of the photograph image, and later on, the moving image (also
used on Instagram). Just as this caused a profound impact on society then, so even more
so now, with the authenticity of the image being called into question, both by way of
ownership and/or by digital manipulation, making the notion of the ‘truth’ of the
‘photographic record’ even more unattainable. But today, does that matter? We have
now moved way beyond that concept.

What it does, though, is make the ‘aura’ of the image potentially more profound. Unlike
Benjamin’s belief that:

“One might subsume the eliminated element in the term 'aura' and go on to say:
that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of
art.” (P.219)

http://www.linkedin.com/pulse/walter-benjamin-instagram-age-digital-reproduction-michael-sankey Page 3 of 7
Walter Benjamin on Instagram in the age of digital reproduction | Michael Sankey | Pulse | LinkedIn 16/08/2016 1:40 pm

Now with the age of digital reproduction the ‘aura’ takes on a whole new and different
meaning, for the aura is contained within the mystery of the work itself, as a new
‘tradition’ is seen to be at play here. Not a ritual of traditional photography, but one that
turns the notion of tradition on its head, preferenceing instead accessibility and
massification, with little or no regard for integrity or cultural heritage. For what is
culture when one can access images from around the world within seconds of an
incident occurring in a completely different country, and bringing the reality of that to
the device in your hand.

However, this does align with his notion of bringing things ever ‘closer’ both spatially
and humanly, with the purpose of undermining its uniqueness byway of everything
being seen as a potential reproduction (p.219), ultimately leading to a sense of universal
equality.

So what if the clerics of the middle ages

viewed The Venus as an ominous idol, how
could they do anything other than this, but
#WhatWouldWalterSay, where is the aura
now? The aura resides with the created; the
new and refreshed imagery. No magic
necessary, no ritual other than to pay
homage to the new aesthetic. The ritualistic
cult that pervaded the post-modern era has
now given way to the eclectic, consumed by
the crisis of faith it brought upon itself. For as Walter so rightly said, almost
prophetically, “To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work
of art designed for reproducibility.” (p.221) However, one could assume that there is no
way he could not foresee the extent to which this would be the case.

The limitations of course of seeing reproductions in the 1930’s were fairly limited and
Benjamin’s understanding, in this, could only have stretched to the mechanisms of the
day; galleries, posters, newspapers, casual exhibition spaces, etc. Unlike today where
we have Instagram, countless magazines (online and printed), blogs, Facebook,
Pinterest, and the list could go on and on. The notion of the ‘exhibition’ speaks of a
rarefied space (the physical gallery), itself now having an aura of nostalgia about it,
rather than being the place where the latest ideas can to be shared. The Internet is now
my gallery and My Instagram account potentially has an audience of some 500 Million
people. It’s no longer rarefied, photography and more importantly art in general has
been given a new, superior, ritual value.

Long gone (thank goodness) is the debate around whether photography is art (ask any
Gallery Director), instead it has now transformed art. Our pictorial eyes ‘have’ now
adjusted and matured, to the point where there is no debate left. With or without
captions, hashtags, or GPS markers, photography now shares the performance of the
everyday walk of life, with or without the subject even being aware so that they can

http://www.linkedin.com/pulse/walter-benjamin-instagram-age-digital-reproduction-michael-sankey Page 4 of 7
Walter Benjamin on Instagram in the age of digital reproduction | Michael Sankey | Pulse | LinkedIn 16/08/2016 1:40 pm

change their position or disposition. One simply participates by walking by.

So now the ‘taker’ has become the ‘critic’

and the critic the taker, and the ‘Like’ has
become the new token of participation. Even
with portraiture and the ‘cult of
remembrance’ than Benjamin ponders, oh
how he would have been completely
fascinated by the advent of the #selfie. But
hang-on, they had selfies for centuries, but
the difference being the ‘spell of the
personality’ is no longer limited to the

individuals place in society. Thus, as predicted, the distinction that had existed between
author and public is forever dispelled, as the reader becomes the writer and visa versa.

But with this new found ‘power’ the individual does not have to wait as long for
satisfaction. Unlike what was suggested by Benjamin, no longer is the satisfaction that
accompanies the creation of art ‘fully satisfied only later’, the desire is for it to be
satisfied ‘now’ and within seconds. And why not? It can be. So it is that that the
pioneering nature of Instagram (and its counterparts) has carried us far beyond its
original goal, as it sacrificed itself on the alter of Facebook, to reach a higher ambition,
whether intentionally or not. Like it or not the mode of participation has changed, at first
with some protest, but mostly now with relief. The spectator demands their fill of visual
content. Yes we can ‘lament that the masses seek distraction’, but this is now the
common place.

So it is that ‘distraction and concentration form polar opposites’ and to what point do we
still want concentration, is there still a chance that we could be absorbed by the work of
art, rather than have it run fleetingly before our eyes? Clearly the role of contemplation
is still a possibility, as the gallery is still alive and well. But there is also the chance that
we are too distracted to see past the screen in our hand to notice there is a place we can

http://www.linkedin.com/pulse/walter-benjamin-instagram-age-digital-reproduction-michael-sankey Page 5 of 7
Walter Benjamin on Instagram in the age of digital reproduction | Michael Sankey | Pulse | LinkedIn 16/08/2016 1:40 pm

retreat to find a place of contemplation. So it is I am left to finish with the same words
as Benjamin, and that ‘the public is an examiner, but an absent-minded one’.

References

Benjamin, W. (1955). Illuminations. Ed. H. Arendt. Translated by H. Zohn. Schocken

Books, New York.

Tripsas, M., & Gavetti, G. (2000). Capabilities, cognition, and inertia: Evidence from
digital imaging. Strategic Management Journal. (21). Pp. 1147–1161.

Mitchell, W.J. (1992). The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic
Era. MIT Press. ISBN: 9780262631600

Wikipedia: History of the single-lens reflex camera. Available from:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_single-lens_reflex_camera

Wikimedia Commons. Walter Benjamin vers 1928.jpg available from:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Walter_Benjamin_vers_1928.jpg

The Chicago Sun-Times (12 March, 2016). McGraw-Hill says digital sales beat print for
first time.
http://chicago.suntimes.com/news/mcgraw-hill-textbooks-digital-online/

Tagged in: photography, instagram, art history

Michael Sankey
Director, Learning Environments and Media at University of Southern Queensland
17 posts

0 comments

Leave your thoughts here…

Don't miss more posts by Michael Sankey

Coaching: Leaders can seldom do it on The path of least resistance: Revisited Social media in higher education:

http://www.linkedin.com/pulse/walter-benjamin-instagram-age-digital-reproduction-michael-sankey Page 6 of 7
Walter Benjamin on Instagram in the age of digital reproduction | Michael Sankey | Pulse | LinkedIn 16/08/2016 1:40 pm

their own Michael Sankey on LinkedIn Lessons from a pro-learning…

Michael Sankey on LinkedIn Michael Sankey on LinkedIn

Looking for more of the latest headlines on LinkedIn?

Discover more stories

Help Center About Careers Advertising Talent Solutions Sales Solutions Small Business Mobile Language Upgrade Your Account
LinkedIn Corporation © 2016 User Agreement Privacy Policy Ad Choices Community Guidelines Cookie Policy Copyright Policy Send Feedback

http://www.linkedin.com/pulse/walter-benjamin-instagram-age-digital-reproduction-michael-sankey Page 7 of 7

View publication stats