Walter Benjamin on Photography

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WALTER BENJAMIN ON PHOTOGRAPHY

Author(s): HEINZ W. PUPPE
Source: Colloquia Germanica, Vol. 12, No. 3 (1979), pp. 273-291
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WALTER BENJAMIN ON PHOTOGRAPHY
HEINZ W. PUPPE
TEXAS A & M UNIVERSITY
Walter Benjamin was concerned with photography - its invention and

its history - because it represented to him a primary example of the effects
of technology on aesthetic perception. He reviewed several books dealing
with photography and its history. He wrote «A Short History of Photo-
graphy» (1931) and discussed photography in connection with problems
of aesthetics in a talk before the Institutefor the Study of Fascismin Paris
in 1934,in «Letter from Paris 11>in 1936, and finally in his most celebrated
essay, «The Work of Art in the Era of Mechanical Reproduction» in
1936.•
The primary issue in Benjamin's discussions dealing with photography
appears in retrospect to be ideological - an annoying fact only too easily
ignored. In English language publications serving the art industry, Ben-
jamin is quoted with increasing frequency. It is evident, ad oculos,that the
trade has found another fashionable authority to be cited ipse dixit. Ben-
jamin's ideological position is largely ignored, however, particularly when
his writings are made to serve as a grinding stone for someone's dull ax.
His views are now past history - a product of Benjamin the intellectual,
but also a product of his times, and one might do well to read him in
historic perspective. And yet, even where Benjamin is misread, when his
views are taken out of their historic context, and when the purpose of
his polemics is obfuscated in the discussion of today's problems in art,
one might welcome the current interest in his writings because they raise
impertinent but necessary questions.•
Two factors impede the recognition of Benjamin's ideological position.
He is not always easy to decode, even in German, because of his idio-
syncratic style of writing, and because he wrote in an intellectual world
under the immediate threat of fascism. The ideological idiom of that
world is scarcely comprehensible now without some understanding of the
urgent priorities on the historical stage. Benjamin expressed himself quite
clearly, however, in the introduction to the essay on «Reproduction».
He wanted to introduce, so he wrote, new concepts into aesthetics that
would be useless for the purposes of fascism, setting aside traditional con-
cepts expressed in terms of «creativity», «genius», «eternal values», and
«mystery». The association with fascism evoked by such terms may
puzzle a non-German reader unfamiliar with the forensic· vocabulary
274 Heinz W. Puppe
used by the intellectual left of Germany in the Twenties and Thirties to
indict the bourgeois value system. That value system was accepted with-
in the orbit of western civilization and, to a degree, it still is. Hero wor-
ship was rampant in the arts as well as in politics and the « creative genius»
was accorded the highest honors that state and society could bestow,
provided he followed the accepted rules of the game, even in the role of
innovator. A creative genius was expected to produce works of high art
that bore his unmistakeable stamp - original and unique. Practical ques-
tions of a technical nature were considered gauchesince they detracted
inevitably from the stature of the artist as an original genius. And the
«original genius» as an effective and functioning concept was inevitably
tied to the cult of the individual, to the idea of personal enterprise, and
to notions of individual merit.
As far as the concepts of eternal values and mystery in art are concerned,
it is quite obvious from Benjamin's discussion why these, too, should
be deleted from aesthetics as he understood it: eternal values and mys-
teries have no place in a materialist aesthetic because they are ahistorical
concepts. Perception in general, and perception in art and of art in partic-
ular, are part of a supra-structure subjected to changes in the infra-struc-
ture of a society, which is to say: changes occur eventually in all cultural
areas when economic conditions, conditions of production, undergo
significant changes. 3 And Benjamin saw in the invention and proliferation
of photography just such a significant change - so much so that he attri-
buted to this invention a revolution in art and aesthetics because photog-
raphy destroyed the bond that had tied art to cult and ritual, which, in
their turn, had produced an aura providing the very life conditions of
traditional art and justifying its concomitant aesthetic.
The base of the cult of art and artistic stature was the notion that high
art could only be attributed to genius and creativity of the artist as an
individualist who is more or less inspired mysteriously by the muses, or
by some other well-meaning divinity. Benjamin quotes from an article
in the LeipzigerStadtanzeigerwritten at the time the Daguerrotype was
first introduced in Germany in 1839 by traveling salesmen from Paris:
«A thorough German investigator has proved it to be impossible to fix
fleeting mirror images. Moreover, the mere desire to do so is a blasphemy.
Man has been created in the image of God, and God's image cannot be
fixed by any man-made machine. Only the divine artist, elevated by
heavenly inspiration, may dare to reproduce the godlike countenance of
man in a moment of the most solemn dedication, commanded by his
genius, and without any help from some machine.» Benjamin's biting
Benjamin on Photography 2 75
comment is: «What reveals itself here is that philistine idea of art in all
its ponderous clumsiness which cannot conceive of any technical consid-
erations in relation to art, and which senses the approach of its own de-
mise with the provoking appearance of the new technology.»•
In «Paris, Capital of the 19th Century», Benjamin identified two effects
brought about by the invention of photography:
Arago introduces photography in a speech before the Chamber of Deputies
( 1839). He assigns to it a place in the history of technology ... On the other hand
artists begin to debate its artistic merits ... Nadar proves to be ahead of other
practitioners of photography in his photos of the underground sewer system of
Paris. The lens is here used for the first time to make discoveries. The impor-
tance of this is so great precisely because the subjective component contained
in the information in paintings and drawings is felt to be ever more questionable
in the light of the new technical and social.realities. 5
Thus, photography is capable of extending the range of perception and
reduces at the same time the individual, which is to say the idiosyncratic,
ingredient in the pictorial product. The subjective component in pictorial
and graphic information has become highly questionable; this is decisive,
since new technical and social realities have made traditional aesthetics
obsolete by eliminating the primacy of originality and genius in the
evaluation of art products.
Obsolete or not, technical and social changes have been too radical to
be ideologically acceptable without a struggle. Particularly in the case
of photography, the problem of the consequences of technological change
has been debated since 1839, and the struggle over the recognition of pho-
tography as an art has since then spilled over many times into courts of
law. There is, after all, a good deal of money involved in addition to
points of honor, status, reputation, and the public morals. Benjamin
thought that «the fight between painting and photography during the
course of the 19th century over the problem of the artistic value of its
products seems today misguided and confused» (In 19361).6 If one looks
at the original sources, the dispute over photography as art does not seem
quite as muddled as it appeared to Benjamin who was, after all, mostly
concerned with driving home his point about the end of traditional
aesthetics. One notorious court case in particular well defined the posi-
tions of two camps in the 19th century in the dispute over whether or
not photography, too, was an art.
In this case, which dragged through the Paris courts between 1861
and 1862 to the last Court of Appeals, the legal issue at stake was whether
the products of photography could be defined as art and thus could be
Heinz W. Puppe
claimed to enjoy the protection of the French copyright laws of 1793 and
1810. The proprietors of the photographic portrait factory of Mayer &
Pierson in Paris had sued their competitors, the firm of Betbeder &
Schwabbe, for damages since Betbeder & Schwabbe had pirated and
mass-marketed their portraits of Lord Palmerston and Count Cavour. 1
The large sales of photographic portraits were a lucrative business during
the latter part of the 19th century, at least until improved printing tech-
niques permitted the publication of photographs in magazines and news-
papers. The case of Mayer & Pierson against Betbeder & Schwabbe was
therefore a test case of considerable economic importance in the photo
business. But the art world of Paris also took an intense interest in the
case since it brought to a head the essentially ideological issue of the role
of technology in art. This must have been embarrassing to many painters
of the day since the use of photographs by painters had already become
common practice, so much so that the question for art historians now
seems to be not so much whether a particular painter has used photo-
graphs at all, but rather the extent to which he has used them, even down
to the focal length of the camera lens employed in a given case. 8
The public controversy over the Mayer & Pierson case breaks down
into two basic issues - one involving the question of imitation, precise
imitation, of nature constituting an authentic value, the other one con-
cerning whether the means by which a picture is produced can be an
essential factor in its evaluation. This is, of course, phrasing it in modern
terms which would not have occurred to Mayer & Pierson's attorney,
M. Marie, who argued in his playdoyerbefore the court:
What then is art? Who will defineit? Who will say where it begins and where it
ends? Who will say: you may go just so far and no further? I put these questions
to philosophers who have dealt with them, and we can read with interest what
they have written about art in its different forms. Art, they say, is beauty, and
beauty is truth in its material reality. If we see truth in photography and if truth
in its outward form charms the eye, how then can it fail to be beauty l And if all
the characteristicsof art are found there, how can it fail to be art l Well! I protest
in the name of philosophy.9
And about the painter who reproduces nature and people and thus has
to «copy» nature in a way: « He couldn't be happier than if he were able
to imitate exactly, and he would be quite convinced that he had produced
a work of art by coming as close as possible to this nature which charms
him and which he admires. Is the painter any less of a painter when he
reproduces exactly ?» 10 The court decided in favor of the plaintiffs, con-
curring with M. Marie's argument that photography is an art. The court
Be,yamin on Photograpf?y 2 77
stated that, in its opinion, while photographic pictures are made with the
help of an apparatus - «a dark box and under the influence of light» -
the imprint of the personality of the photographer is nevertheless very
much in evidence because the end result «depends in reproductions of
landscapes in a high degree upon the choice of a point of view, the com-
bination of the effects of light and shadow, and, in tbe case of portraits,
upon the pose of the sitter and the arrangement of clothing and acces-
sories, all of which completely depends on the artistic feeling of the pho-
tographer». 11
During the fall of 1862.,a petition was presented to the court protest-
ing the decision which had caused considerable consternation in the art
community. Many artists felt threatened not so much by the technical
apparatus of photography and its products (of which they made ample
use themselves), but because they could see only too clearly the erosion
of their own ideological position, particularly when they were associated
with the school of neo-classicism which was committed to an idealization
of reality and beautification for the sake of a higher truth. The petition
to the court protesting the opinion rendered in favor of Mayer & Pierson
was signed by 2. 7 artists and published in Moniteurde la Photographic( 1862.
-1863). It read as follows:
Whereas, in recent proceedings, the court was obliged to deal with the question
of whether photography should be counted as fine art, and its products given
the same protection as the works of artists; whereas photography consists of a
series of completelymanual operations which no doubt require some skill in the
manipulations involved, but never resulting in works which could in any cir-
cumstances ever be compared with those works which are the fruits of intelli-
gence and the study of art - on these grounds, the undersigned artists protest
against any comparison which might be made between photography and art. 12
This court case is just one example of the level of discussion during
the 19th century and illustrates the major concerns of the opponents. But
neither party in the dispute over photography as art could see how the
orthodox position on art itself, to which they both adhered, had become
obsolete. Benjamin identified the radical change this way:
The fight between painting and photography during the course of the 19th
century over the artistic value of their products seems today misguided and
confused. This is not to deny its importance, but quite to the contrary; it might
rather emphasizeit. Indeed, this fight was the symptom of a revolution of world
historic proportions which was not realized by either partner in the dispute.
Since the era of mechanicalreproduction dissociated art from its grounding in
cult, the apparent autonomy of art has disappeared. But the 19th century could
Heinz W. Puppe
not see the functional change of the role of art which this implies. The recogni-
tion of this eluded even the 2.oth century for quite some time, though it expe-
rienced the evolution of cinematography,13
Mimesis, as a basis for art, had been one of the most prominent assump-
tions in aesthetics since Aristotle. When the attorney for Mayer & Pierson,
M. Marie, insisted that a photograph is a work of art since it imitates
reality with such perfection, he argued well within traditional bounds.
The petition protesting the acceptance of photography as art signed by
neo-classicists like Ingres and Puvis de Chavannes (the romantic painter
Delacroix officially refused to join in this protest) was likewise placed
within the parameters of traditional aesthetics. It was taken for granted
that art was mimetic, albeit romanticists and nee-classicists insisted that
their art demanded a transformation according to their own ideological
position. Walter Benjamin thought neither of these two positions valid
any longer, because the very conception of mimesis - its production as
well as its reception - were variables subject to changes in material condi-
tions, whether they be social, economic, or technological.
The area of human cognition expressed by vocables such as «mimesis»,
«similarity», and «likeness» is part of that larger concern which has oc-
cupied philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, and medical pathologists
within the larger context of investigations into human perception. Stated
somewhat crudely, perhaps, the difference between two major approaches
taken in the study of human perception can be identified as the scientific
and the philosophic. Within the area of science, human perception is taken
as a somatic phenomenon. This is the field staked out by experimental
psychology, neuropathology, ophthalmology, etc.; in short, man is seen
here through Gr~' s Anatomy, where the underlying basic mechanics of
perception appear as invariables, at least within human, if not within
geological history. The philosophic view, on the other hand, may admit
the histotic variability of perception, which is the view repeatedly em-
phasized by Benjamin when he discusses photography and the image of
reality it creates. In this connection, it is instructive to see how Benjamin
speculated on one fact of human perception of considerable importance
both from the scientific and the philosophic point of view; it is the human
capacity to recognize likenesses.
At the beginning of the 19th century, the panorama, first patented by
Robert Barker of Edinburgh in 1787, had gained great popularity in the
capitals of Europe, followed by the success of the diorama invented by
Bouton and Daguerre in 1812.,which had the added attraction of move-
ment. Both panorama and diorama were designed to produce an imitation
Be,yaminon PhotograpfD, 2.79
of reality intended to create the most perfect illusion of reality. Pho-
tography, on the other hand, was invented to reproduce reality with great
precision without the engulfing illusionist effects of panorama and dio-
rama. Photography produced likenesses, not illusions, and the question of
likeness in portrait photography has remained a fascinating game of
opinions ever since for photographers and consumers alike. Does a
portrait <really>look like the sitter? Does it show his <character>? These
are essentially questions of perception and of the mimetic capacity of
man - the very capacity to perceive likeness, to compare and recognize
what is similar and what is not.
Walter Benjamin, when he discusses perception (Wahrnehmungand
Apperzeption are his terms), usually sees it tied to historic processes and
looks for factors which reveal it to be malleable under physical, technical,
or social conditions. In his short essay «On the Mimetic Capacity» he
wrote:
Nature produces similarities. We merely need to think of mimicry. It is man
who has the highest capacity of simulation. The capacity he has to recognize
similarity is only a minute remnant of the ancient, powerful compulsion to be-
come similar, and to imitate. Perhaps man possesses no higher faculty which is
not in some way determined by the mimetic capability.
But this capability has a history in the phylogenetic as well as in the ontogenetic
sense. As far as the latter is concerned, play is in many ways its schooling. The
play of children is everywhere influenced by mimetic behavior patterns, and
the area involved is by no means confined to those activities in which one
human being imitates another. The child does not only play shopkeeper or
teacher, but also windmill and choo-choo train. What useful purpose could
possibly be served by such a training of the mimetic capability?
The answer presupposes an understanding of the phylogenetic meaning of the
mimetic capability. But in this area it is not enough to think only of the concept
of similarity in present-day terms. As is well known, the living sphere that
appeared to be permeated by the law of similarity in ancient times was all en-
compassing; it reigned in microcosm and macrocosm alike. But those corres-
pondences show their real importance only when it is understood that they are,
all of them, stimulants and catalysts of that mimetic course of the millennia.
One must rather assume that the gift of the ability to produce similarities - the
dance, for example, whose oldest function this is - and, thus with it the ability
to recognize them, has changed in the course ofhistory. 14
Here Benjamin seems to fuse phylogenetics and ontogenetics in an
unusual fashion, regarding both as variables. That appears to be quite
unacceptable since it would blot out the identifying category distinction
marking the very difference between phylogenesis and ontogenesis. Hu-
2.80 Heinz W. Puppe
man perception has as a physical base a neurological servo-mechanism
which, at this date, is not completely understood. One may accept this
much, however, that the material's neurological structure constituting
man's genetic heritage is not subject to the forces of cultural change
within historic time. The phylogenetic endowment of man remains
constant within a time span counted in mere millennia. As far as human
perception is concerned, it seems fairly clear that it is determined by a
combination of invariable bio-chemical factors, and by variable cultural
factors. These may be ontogenetic, that is, specific to an individual orga-
nism; or it may be social, that is, specific to a whole social stratum. Ben-
jamin clearly meant the latter when he wrote of «the phylogenetic mean-
ing of the mimetic capability». It was a major concern for him to de-
monstrate with concrete examples how technology provided the impetus
for that «revolution of world historic proportions» in the scope and
direction of human perception which released the mimetic capability (the
capability to create and to recognize similarity) from magic. Wrote Ben-
jamin: «The elk that man of the Stone Age draws on the walls of his cave
is an instrument of magic ... it is meant for the spirits. » 15
For an understanding of Benjamin's position in his discussion of the
influence of technology in the arts, it is indispensable to recall his own
position in time and the polemic character of his remarks and arguments.
He was a partisan engaged in a deadly struggle against fascism, and, as an
intellectual, he attacked what he considered to be the ideological base of
the enemy. (It is difficult, if not impossible, to give here a reasonably brief
statement of what that ideological base of fascism was, particularly since
the term fascism is now used as a mere invective against all manner of
undesirable political phenomena and is nearly useless as a term of defini-
tion.) In a postscript to his essay «The Work of Art in the Era of Mechan-
ical Reproduction» Benjamin quotes the famous Futurist Tommaso
Marinetti from his manifesto published on the occasion of the colonial
war in Ethiopia. It demonstrates with remarkable clarity and emotional
appeal how society was not mature enough to use technology as a bene-
ficial tool, and that technology was not developed sufficiently to channel
elementary social energies into a desirable direction. Quotes Benjamin
from that notorious manifesto: «War is beautiful because it enriches a
flowering meadow with the flaming orchids of machine guns. War is
beautiful because it fuses rifle fire, artillery barrages, pauses, perfumes,
and odors of putrefaction into a symphony. » 16 By this example, Benjamin
tries to show both how fascism uses the «aesthetization of politics», and
what the inevitable outcome of that exercise has to be. Benjamin evidently
Be'!}aminon Photograpf?y
hoped this quote from Marinetti would be self-explanatory. What was, by
far, not as self-evident, particularly in Benjamin's time, was his identifica-
tion of fascist aesthetics with traditional aesthetics made in the introduc-
tion to that same essay on «Reproduction». Benjamin perceived in his
several works of the last decade of his life how the cult of beauty, the cult
of genius, the revival of mystery and the propagation of «higher» eternal
values by the political machinery in the Nazi Empire in particular had
grown on the fertile soil prepared by the bourgeois society of the 19th
century.
The literature on this subject published in German is already consider-
able. One might single out, however, one particular analysis dealing with
one of the most prominent German philosophers of the zoth century,
Martin Heidegger, and that in connection with a topic most relevant in
connection with Benjamin's polemics against fascism; it is the issue of
technology in modern society. The French GermanistRobert Minder, in
an essay entitled «Heidegger and Hebel or The Language of MeBkirch»,
subjects a publication by Heidegger of 1957 to a thorough and meticu-
lously documented analysis placing Heidegger's thought firmly within
the German anti-rationalist tradition whose bite noir was Descartes, and
whose antithesis was the philosophy of the Enlightenment. With Heideg-
ger, philosophy was indeed tied to cult and ritual - to mystery and eternal
values of essences that had nothing in common with those of Goethe.
Heidegger's resentment against technology, urbanization, and the age of
industrialization was the logical consequence of his ideology. 11 In men-
tioning Heidegger, it should be understood that he has to stand in here
for a long line of antagonists who cried their a/arumat any intrusion of
technological concerns into their particular sanctum. Socrates had his
complaints about the invention of writing, and Leonardo da Vinci, from
whose notebooks Benjamin liked to quote, mentioned once with irritation
how painting was not, as some persons claimed, inferior to singing just
because it was produced by means of tools. «If you, o musician, say that
painting is a mechanical art because it is performed with the use of hands,
you roust admit that music is performed with the mouth which is also a
human organ. And the mouth is not working in this case for the sense of
taste, just as the hands while painting are not working for the sense of
touch.» 18
The ressentimentagainst technology does not gain full momentum,
however, until well after Rousseau and concurrently with the introduc-
tion of photography after 1839. It also took different forms and was ex-
pressed in different degrees of intensity, and it seems to have been most
282 Heinz W. Puppe
pronounced in the German states, which is to say, in those areas of Cen-
tral Europe where the German language is spoken. With hindsight, one
can say this hostile attitude toward the advancement of technology
created a condition of explosive conflict. The guardians of ideology, of
the «philosophy of life», the academics and the established religions kept
right on propagating the simple life - a return to the soil, the peasant as
the bed-rock of society, country life as bliss, an acceptance of the eternal
mysteries of life, and the glorification of «soul» over reason. And all this,
when the German states were rapidly advancing after a late start toward a
rigorous rationalization of their economies, toward industrialization and
urbanization on a vast scale. 19 Much of German literature of the 19th and
even of the early 20th century presents itself as an almost perverse symp-
tom of ideological retardation.
Walter Benjamin's persistent emphasis on the malleability, i.e., the
historic variability of human perception, has already been mentioned. No-
where does he assert, however, that this is the only way in which per-
ception can be regarded. When he focused his attention particularly on
the historic variability of perception, he did so for polemic reasons in
times of great peril. It is understandable, therefore, that Benjamin did not
dwell at any length on the physiological base of perception. It is, even
now, still quite difficult, if not impossible, to make an exact and scien-
tifically verifiable distinction between variable and invariable modes of
perception since the interpretation of all obtainable data is subject to
assumptions which tend to tie the interpreter himself into an infinite re-
gress. There is ample evidence that Benjamin was very much interested in
the puzzles of perception and the infinite range of its nature which eludes
finite conceptualization, even when he took a strong stand against the
conservative (read <fascist>)hierarchy of eternal values. From his perso-
nal experience with hashish and other drugs, Benjamin knew of the phar-
macological effects on the perception of space and time, of taste, and
touch, and sound, but also of powerful human emotions, when «hashish
knows how to persuade nature to release for us the use of our own per-
sonal being familiar with Love, only to do so less selfishly. »•0 That phar-
macological substances should have such a profound effect on the manner
in which the human mind will apperceive should have been seen as an
affirmation of materialism, but Benjamin makes very little of it, and that
merely in form of a description of purely personal impressions.
Elsewhere in his descriptions of perception, Benjamin almost habit-
ually links what he calls sociological conditions with highly personal
impressions which could hardly be generalized since they are idiosyncrat-
Be/1/aminon Photograpl!J
ic rather than analytic insights. And even where Benjamin discusses pho-
tographs directly, he gives his feelings free reign. Examples abound where
his own pre-knowledge of what he sees in front of him will provide the
impetus for his observations.
But even where Benjamin's impressionism will strain credulity, he can
still come up with sharp identifications of decisive problems which trans-
cend his own times. One well-known example of Benjamin's impres-
sionism is his introduction of the term «aura» with its seemingly super-
erogatory and even gratuitous <definition>:
... the unique apparition of a distance, no matter how close it may be. To gaze in
repose at a mountain range in the distance on a summer afternoon, or the
branch of a tree casting its shadow on the viewer - that means to inhale the aura
of these mountains, of this branch. With this description in mind, it is easy to
comprehend the social determinants of the deterioration of the aura in the pre-
sent. It is based on two circumstances, both related to the increasing importance
of the masses in life today ... It is a passionate concern of the masses now to
approach things closer physically, and on the <human>level; and the masses
have the tendency to overcome the uniqueness of every given thing or event by
appropriating it in the form of its reproduction. Day by day the desire asserts
itself ever more inexorably to take hold of things and events in closest prox-
imity in the shape of a picture, or rather, in its reproduction. Reproductions
made so readily available in illustrated magazines and newsreels differ un-
mistakeably from paintings. In a painting, uniqueness and permanence are as
much a part of them as is the ephemeral nature and the capacity to be endlessly
reproduced are inherent in reproductions ... The destruction of the aura is the
symptom of a perception in which the feeling for sameness in the world has
grown so much, that it apprehends it through reproductions even in that which
is unique. 21
It is a little difficult to agree with Benjamin that from his description of
a mountain range in the distance and a tree branch against the sky on a
lazy summer afternoon it would be «easy to comprehend the social de-
terminants of the deterioration of the aura». And this talk about «the
masses» and their «passionate concern» one might dismiss as dated. But a
slight terminological face-lift might show Benjamin's argument to be still
well within present-day range. For him, the total change in the function
of art as the result of technological advances is essentially identified in
negative terms: loss of aura, severing of the links with which art is tied
to cult and ritual, the end of the autonomy of art, the loss of uniqueness
as a characteristic of the work of art in the age of mass-production of
images. The change of the role of art, its production and reception, are
then seen as a paradigm, a symptom for the larger changes in society as a
Heinz W. Puppe
whole, and these, in turn, are manifested in new ways of perception and
manners of thinking. In terms of cultural anthropology, the notion of
«aura» is simply the emotional equivalent of a belief in magic, which,
when applied to the production of images - pictures representing real
objects - is a feeling of awe before the capacity of special individuals -
divinely gifted, magically empowered - to reproduce reality on a piece of
paper, stone, wood, or the like. After all, in certain cultures it was, and
still is, forbidden to make such reproductions of reality, because it would
be blasphemous to do so. And where the artistry of producing images of
reality was practiced, such practice was awesome, and even more so the
more exact, the more precise this reproduction turned out to be.
It now takes a mental effort to turn back the clock in one's imganination
and conceive of what precision meant in the pre-industrial age. Richard
Neutra has given some thought to this important problem and to the
question of what precision means in terms of changes in perception:
Precision - that is, minimum deviation from the theoretical aim - has at all
times been a major human aspiration; in fact, ... it has been considered the ob-
ject of a basic urge. For thousands of years precision of production could only
be achieved by laborious methods. Our attitude toward precision has thus been
closely linked to the idea of a slow, long, and painstaking process, and ... the
quality of precise workmanship has in turn become associated with the charac-
teristic of rarity, sometimeseven of uniqueness ... With the coming of machines,
however, the concept of quality has undergone a profound change, as far as
our nervous responses are concerned. The productive processes have often be-
come puzzling, and we can no longer vacariously share in them. The formative
background, the genetic perspective, is now blurred and clouded. Our custo-
mary clues no longer fit. Precision in workmanship meant one thing when the
work was done by craftsmen; it means another when it is inhuman, done by
strange machines.22
Mechanical precision was first introduced in the munitions industry,
which was also one of the first industries to apply methods of mass-pro-
duction. Projectiles had to fit into gun barrels exactly since the mass-
consumption of bullets and grenades had to be fool-proof. At the same
time, interchangeability became essential to facilitate replacement in in-
numerable other manufacturing processes as well. And precision is a strict
requirement and pre-condition for interchangeability. Tolerance in the
manufacture of ball bearings for example, as early as the 1920s, had to be
kept within 1/10,000 of an inch.
«All this precise workmanship was marshalled to produce not a refrac-
tor for astronomical use, but a common, almost ubiquitous article. The
concept of rarity or uniqueness is as foreign to this new type of precision
Be,yamin on Photography
as it is to this new type of quality. The entire issue grew into a matter of
broad popular impressiveness; it thoroughly re-educated us and recondi-
tioned our attitudes. Precision, formerly a luxury, has turned into a pre-
requisite for economical production and maintenance, because the possible
market, the scope of consumption depends on it. »23 What is important
here is that «the machine introduced an entirely new psychology of pre-
cision by changing, and sometimes directly reversing, the accents. Thanks
to it, irregular, imprecise forms have become unusual, and almost mor-
bidly attractive. »2 • Richard Neutra shows, as much as Walter Benjamin
had, that changes in production methods, changes in technology, have
radically altered human perception of the world of things even though a
severe cultural lag has prevented the conscious acceptance of that change.
This cultural lag has produced preposterous inner contradictions which
show up in mass-produced consumer items, «custom-made», with a fake
appearance of having been made by hand. Where precision was once the
sign of the most excellent craftsmanship, it is now associated with ma-
chine-production and dehumanization. And imperfections are to suggest
the human touch. Richard Neutra explains this odd phenomenon in very
plausible somato-psychological terms: «We seem physiologically made
to see things in a genetic time perspective. Moreover, we unconsciously
look at things as if they had been produced by a human maker; we tend to
sense at work a creative being with nervous equipment and behavior
similar to those of man. This naive, anthropomorphic attitude is natural.
It, too, is physiologically determined, because any creative experiences
that we can possibly have ourselves are correlated with our own nervous
reactions, such as accompany our labors to produce a thing. »25
Applied to photography one can see how the comprehension of images
has shifted since the invention of the picture-making machine. The viewer
can identify with the manipulations by which a painting, a drawing, a
carving or an etching has been produced; and the greater the precision of
the rendition, the greater is the respect for the maker. Most importantly,
picture-making was human, no matter how mysterious was its product.
But with the photographic process, the naive anthropomorphic attitude be-
comes impossible and another attitude takes its place: the viewer appre-
hends the image as objective and truthful since the subjective interpreta-
tion of the human producer is eliminated. (This applies, of course, only to
photographs not manipulated like those of Moholy-Nagy, or Man Ray).
Benjamin thought that « photography ... demonstrates the difference be-
tween technology and magic as a thoroughly historic variable»,26 but in
his descriptions of photographs, he makes very personal and impressionis-
Heinz W. Puppe
tic observations, expressing a feeling for that kind of magic which appre-
hends photographs as isomorphic with real time and real space. He writes:
In painted portraits, the person himself, the sitter is forgotten after two or three
generations and what remains is the interest in the painting itself as evidence of
the skill of the artist. In photography, one encounters something new and pe-
culiar: in that fisher-woman from New Haven, her eyes downcast with such
casual and seductive modesty, there remains something that does not fuse into
the document of art of the photographer [David Octavio] Hill, something that
cannot be silenced,something that inquires roughly and demandingly the name
of that woman who had lived there and who is still real, even present right here,
and who will never melt completely into Art ... The most precise technology
can endow its products with a magicalvalue which no painted picture can have
for us ever again.27
It is Benjamin's use of the terms «magic» and «aura» which is confusing
at times, since the distinction, if there is any, is obscure. But if Benjamin
can be faulted for inconsistencies, in his treatment of photography and
photographers he has been painstakingly consistent in linking directly to
historic variables explicable in technical terms whatever feelings and emo-
tions, aura or magic, he discovered in his impressions. Speaking of early
photographs of people, he says: «There was an aura about them, an air
( ein Medium) that gives their gaze that richness and security as it pene-
trates it. And again, the technical equivalent is obvious; it consists in the
absolute continuum of brightest light to darkest shade. »28 This continuum
of light was supposed to be a result of the long time exposures necessary
in early photography, which again was proof to Benjamin of the techni-
cal condition on which the auratic phenomenon depends.
Benjamin was mistaken here, of course. Professional technical knowl-
edge, knowledge of cameras, lenses, chemical processes, was not within
his competence to discuss.Long time exposures in portrait photography,
for example, were no longer necessary after the construction of the Petz-
val lens and its manufacture by Voigtlander since 1841. And that conti-
nuum of light he so much admired in early photographs - it has no
mystery about it. It is a criterion of quality in photography today as it was
in 1 8 5o, and it is the result of skill, control, and taste - one possible proof
of the professional competence of the photographer.
Benjamin may be faulted on technical grounds for inconsistencies in his
discussions and for poetic ambiguities, as well as for a disregard of the
physiological constants of perception. But he retains an important posi-
tion in the history of the analysis of perception for his insights into the so-
cial significance of photography, and the concatenations of modes of per-
Benjaminon Photography
ception with the world of affairs. He was well aware of the necessity of a
two-pronged research into perception, and he set his accents where the
times demanded it. In 1938 he wrote: «Whether sensual perception of
man is not only determined by natural constants but also by historic
variables - that is one of the most advanced questions in research, where
every answer, every inch of ground has to be gained in hard struggles. »2 •
It is this basic attitude which informed his judgments of those photogra-
phers which he discussed, and which set the tenor of his polemics against
a «botched reception of technology». He praised the early Daguerreo-
typists, as well as Nadar, Hill, and finally, Eugene Atget and August
Sander for desentimentalizing the objective world which had been dipped
into aesthetic syrup. And he faulted the photographers of the school of
«New Objectivity» (Neuc Sachlichkeit) of the late 2.osand early 30s for
the misuse of objectivity in spite of a cooled down rendition of the world
in their pictures. In «The Author as Producer», Benjamin wrote:
I would like to begin my discussion of the New Objectivity with the assertion
that supplying the machinery of production without changing it is highly ob-
jectionable even when the materials with which this machinery is being supplied
appears to be revolutionary. We are faced with the fact (the last decade in Ger-
many has given us plenty of proof for that) that the bourgeois machinery of
production and publication can assimilate an amazing amount of revolutionary
themes, and even propagate it without seriously threatening its own substance
and the security of the class which owns and controls it ... I assert furthermore,
that a substantial part of that literature of the left had no other social function
than to utilize the political situation for obtaining ever new effects for the enter-
tainment of the public ... And let us now trace the development of photography
further. What do we see? It is becoming ever more subtle, ever more modern,
and the result is that it cannot photograph any housing project, any garbage
dump without glorifying it. 30
Photographs are never inert objects rendering reality obejctively - reality
as the thing in itself - but always meet the viewer in a context of signifi-
cation. Benjamin identified that signification for a number of photogra-
phers of his time in specific categories. Eugene Atget demystified Paris
and its environs, August Sander demonstrated in his portrait collection
of German people the physiognomy of social classes, Karl BloJ3feldt
served a specific scientific purpose in revealing the universality and natu-
ral origin of architectural structures in his close-up photographs of plants.
If photography loses its grounding in such specific categories of significa-
tion - if it loses its function as a mode of discovery, its function as a
modifier of perception - then it becomes what Benjamin calls «creative»
in a pejorative sense.
288 Heinz W. Puppe
The lens is then used to produce a <synthesis>;the photographic Schmockenters
upon the stage ... The more the crisis of the present social order spreads, and
the more rigidly its fragmented components confront each other in dead oppo-
sition, the more has creativity become a fetish, which owes its existence to mere
changes in fashionable lighting effects. Creativity in photography is its surren-
der to fashion. The World is Beautiful - exactly that is its motto. Here is un-
masked the posturing of that kind of photography that can pompously glorify
any garbage can, but is unable to grasp the human contexts in which it may
occur. This photography promotes the market value of even the most dreamy
and forlorn subject matter far more than it contributes to any increase in
knowledge about it.3'
This quote comes from Benjamin's essay «A Short History of Photog-
raphy», which was first published in three installments in the periodical
LiterarischeWelt in the Fall of 19 3 1. The time and circumstances under
which Benjamin published this essay are of some interest, because the
photo book he criticized without mentioning the author's name was the
first photographic bestseller in German, The World is Beautiful, by the
highly respected photographer and representative of the New Objectivity,
Albert Renger-Patsch, who was also associated with the Folkwang Mu-
seum in Essen. 32 This book was important enough to be reviewed in
BerlinerIllustrirte in 1928 by Thomas Mann - and in glowing terms. Mann
had this to say about technology and art:
Photographs - I know of the resistance of prudishness in the humanities which
this word provokes, but I do not share it. I do understand the dignified protest
of cultural conservatives and opponents of technology against the admission of
photography into the realm of Spirit and Art. But in practical terms I have little
inclination to join that protest. I even take the opportunity to confess to a lack
of prejudice on this point which borders on apostacy. Intrusion of technology
into art- surely, that sounds bad, it smacks of decadence and destruction of the
soul. But could it not be that technology, while the soul succumbs to it - that
technology gains a soul ?33
One cannot help but admire Benjamin's audacity in taking on Thomas
Mann by characterizing Renger-Patsch as a photographic Schmock,when
Mann had praised him: «It is Renger-Patsch in Bad Harzburg, a master,
... devoted to the visual with that exact love and determined tenderness
known only to the heart of an artist.» 34 But this attack on Renger-Patsch
and Thomas Mann's judgment would be no more than an anecdote, if
the issue that concerned Walter Benjamin so much during the last decade
of his life had not proved to be so tenaciously topical nearly 40 years later.
What mattered to Benjamin was that photography had to be a means to
an end, a means for discovery, to create new modes of perception, to reveal
Be'!}aminon Photography
the factors that make the facts. And the priority for him was unequivo-
cally the uncovering of the brutal realities of the social and political order
of his day. What matters in photography is the product. Does it serve its
purpose? Does it reform consciousness? To fault the maker of images for
his tools, the painter for using brushes, the writer for using a typewriter,
would seem absurd. A moral issue is involved in the categorical impera-
tive that no man should use another merely as a means to an end. But the
means by which a picture is obtained is not such a moral issue, and a cam-
era has no essence. Better to remember what Vespasian quipped about
tax revenues: nonolet. And while the camera has no essence of its own, it
cannot perform miracles, particularly the miracle of objective rendition of
reality. Surely, the camera cannot tell a lie, but that is so because it cannot
speak at all. Moreover, it can only perform, but it is made to perform by
man. Its end-product is a result of efforts and judgments by many people,
the last of whom is the photographer - and often not even he but the
printmaker who is the last in the chain. In other words: the photograph
is, horrors of horrors, a collective product.
Walter Benjamin saw in his time probably better than anyone (with the
exception of Bert Brecht) the revolution that had been effected by the in-
vention of photography. But he also saw already that this revolution which
transformed the arts would be resisted in the marketplace. The art industry
has appropriated photography as an art. Agents, publishers, and museum
directors are promoting it, and only art historians are still strenuously
ignoring photography. But that is bound to change. The photographic
Schmockseems to win the day; photographs by well publicized photo
artists have become lucrative investments, and prices are rising.
And yet, while the photographic art market is rapidly expanding and
commercial galleries specializing in photography are multiplying in the
U.S., Europe, and Japan, photography extends its influence on percep-
tion far beyond the relatively confined area of a jaded art public. Photog-
raphy as art is just one relatively minor aspect of photography. It is of
all-pervasive social and historic importance now, and Walter Benjamin's
observations forty years after his obscure death are gaining in importance
when the political and social contexts recede 'into a past that is itself re-
membered through its photos.
Notes
1 Translations are mine to avoid inconsistences; exceptions are identified. All titles are given
in English in the text, originals are identified in the notes. «Kleine Geschichte der Photo-
graphic», in Dar Kunstwerkim ZeitalterseinertechnisthtnRtprotluz/erbarkeit(1963; rpt. Frank-
Heinz W. Puppe
fort am Main, 1968), pp. 65-93. «Pariser Brief II», in GeiammelteSchriften III, ed. Hella
Tiedemann-Bartels (Frankfurt am Main, 1972), pp. 495-507, this edition under the general
editorship of Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhauser is still incomplete at this
writing. «Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit», cited below
as essay on «Reproduction», in GesammelteSchri(tenI, 2 ed. R. Tiedemann and H. Schwep-
penhauser (Frankfurt, 1974), pp. 471-508; this is the second version of the essay.
2 Susan Sontag wrote seven articles on photography for The New York Review of Books be-
tween 1973 and 1977 in which she dealt repeatedly with Benjamin's views; now as a book:
On Photography(New York, N. Y., 1977). Contributors to Artforum have quoted and dis-
cussed Benjamin recently with some frequency; Artforum also published « Kleine Ge-
schichte der Photographie» as «Short History of Photography», in February 1977 (Vol.
XV, No. 6), pp. 46-61; the illustrations are very helpful, the transl. by Phil Patton overly
literal.
3 In the literature on Benjamin in German his knowledge - or the lack of his knowledge - of
Marxism and Marx has been discussed with relish. I am merely presenting Benjamin's views
on a narrow topic, and as briefly as possible.
4 «Kl. Geschichte d. Photographie», op. cit. note 1 above, p. 68. B'.s quote from the Leipzi-
ger Stadtanzeigeris taken from Max Dauthendey, Aus meinemLeben (Munich, 1930), p. 44-45.
Dauthendey's quote could not be verified. See also Max Dauthendey's Der Geist meinesVa-
ters (Munich, 1925), pp. 47 and 57.
5 «Paris, die Hauptstadt des 19. Jahrhunderts», in Walter Benjamin, Schriften, ed. Theodor
and Gretel Adorno (Frankfurt am Main, 1955), vol. II, p. 410.

6 «Das Kunstwerk ... »,vol.I, 2, p. 486. See note 1.
7 See Mayer & (Louis?) Pierson, La Photographie(Paris, 1862). A predictably self-serving
account of the affair, but also of great historical interest for the theory of art. Very important
as a source book and analysis is Gisele Freund's: La photographieen Franceau dix-neuvilme
siicle. Essai desociologie
et d'esthltique(Paris, 1936). Appeared in German as Photographieund
biirgerlicheGesellschaft(Munich, 1968). This was a doctoral dissertation submitted at the Sor-
bonne. Benjamin attended the public defense, and subsequently reviewed the book (published
by Adrienne Monnier!) in «Pariser Brief II», op. cit. note 1, p. 500.
8 For a detailed documentation see Aaron Scharf, Art and Photography(London, 1968; Balti-
more, 1969), particularly on Degas, pp. 144-169. For the effects of lenses of different focal
lengths used by a painter see the exhibition catalogue by J. Kirk T. Varnedoe and Thomas
P. Lee, GustaveCaillebotte(The Museum of Fine Arts: Houston, 1976).
9 Mayer & Pierson, La Photographie, p. 217, transl. Scharf, Art, p. II4.
10 Scharf, Art, 114.
11 From the French cited by Heinz Buddemeier, Panorama,Diorama, Photographie (Munich,

1970), p. n7.
12 Transl. by Scharf, Art, pp. II5-II6.
13 «Kunstwerk», in Ge.r.Sehr., I, 2, p. 486.

14 Schriften (1955), p. 507.
1 s «Kunstwerk», Ges. Sehr., I, 2, p. 483.
16 «Kunstwerk», p. 507.
17 «Robert Minder, Heidegger, Hebel oder die Sprache von MeBkirch», in Dichter in tierGe-
sellschaft(Frankfurt am Main, 1966), repr. in DeutscheLiteraturkritik der Gegenwart,ed. Hans

Mayer (Frankfurt am Main, 1972), IV, 2, pp. 368-439.
18 From «Paragone», in Trattato de/lapittura di Lionardo da Vinci, ed. G. Manizini (Rome,
1817), repr. in A DocumentaryHistory of Art, ed. Elizabeth G. Holt (Garden City, N. Y.,
Be'!}aminon Photography
1957), p. 279. Music in the M.A. had been part of the Quadrivium, the higher order of the
seven Liberal Arts, while the visual arts, painting etc., had been regarded as crafts.
19 From the voluminous literature on this subject consult a recent assessment of the political
and social realities in Germany during the middle of the 19th Century: Theodore S. Hame-
row, The Social Foundations of German Unification( 18f 8-1871), 2 vols. (Princeton, N. J., 1969
and 1972).
20 «Haschisch in Marseille» in Denlebilder, Ges. Sehr., IV, 1, p. 416.
21 «Kunstwerk», Ges. Sehr., I, 2, p. 479. The vocabel «the masses» was used in Benjamin's time
as a bugle call for action; even though still used today, its subjective correlative that was so
alive in the Thirties has now vanished.
22 Richard Neutra, Survival through Design (New York, 1954), pp. 74-n.
2 3 Neutra, Survival, p. 76.
26 «Kl. Gesch. d. Photogr.», p. 72, footnote 3.
2 , «Kl. Gesch. d. Photogr.», pp. 70-71.
2 s «Kl. Gesch. d. Photogr.», pp. 78-79.
29 In a review of Dolf Sternberger, Panorama ... (Hamburg, 1938), in Ges. Sehr., III, p. 573.
30 «Der Autor als Produzent», in Vermche iiberBrecht (Frankfurt am Main, 1966), pp. 105-106.
3 1 «Kl. Gesch. d. Photogr.», p. 90.
3 2 Albert Renger-Patsch, Die Welt ist Schon, ed. and introd. Carl G. Heise (Munich, 1928).
Inspecting the book now one may find it innocuous; but Benjamin's objection was directed
against the title and its implications. For a discussion of New Objectivity in photography
by one of its proponents see Helmut Gemsheim, Creatin Pbotograpqy. Aesthetic Trends
1819-1960 (New York, N. Y., 1962), pp. 172-188.
33 Thomas Mann, Werlee (Frankfurt, 1960), vol. IX, p. 902.
34 Th. Mann, Werlee, vol. IX, p. 903.

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WALTER BENJAMIN ON PHOTOGRAPHY

Walter Benjamin was concerned with photography - its invention and

and Gretel Adorno (Frankfurt am Main, 1955), vol. II, p. 410.

7 See Mayer & (Louis?) Pierson, La Photographie(Paris, 1862). A predictably self-serving

11 From the French cited by Heinz Buddemeier, Panorama,Diorama, Photographie (Munich,

13 «Kunstwerk», in Ge.r.Sehr., I, 2, p. 486.

1 s «Kunstwerk», Ges. Sehr., I, 2, p. 483.

sellschaft(Frankfurt am Main, 1966), repr. in DeutscheLiteraturkritik der Gegenwart,ed. Hans

2 3 Neutra, Survival, p. 76.

2 4 Neutra, Survival, p. 77.

2 5 Neutra, Survival, p. 74.

26 «Kl. Gesch. d. Photogr.», p. 72, footnote 3.

2 , «Kl. Gesch. d. Photogr.», pp. 70-71.

2 s «Kl. Gesch. d. Photogr.», pp. 78-79.

3 1 «Kl. Gesch. d. Photogr.», p. 90.

34 Th. Mann, Werlee, vol. IX, p. 903.

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