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History is photography: the afterimage of Walter Benjamin

Posted by on Monday, April 5, 2010
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2479/is_n2_v26/ai_21187359/?tag=content;col1

History is photography: the afterimage of Walter Benjamin

Afterimage, Sept-Oct, 1998 by Jeannene M. PrzyblyskiIn a New York Times Book Review essay on Jay Parini's 1997 historical novel about the last days of Walter Benjamin, Benjamin's Crossing, the critic made annoyed reference to Benjamin's "leonine status in the eyes of many academics today" He complained that despite Benjamin's failure as both an academic and a features writer, his imperfect grasp of the relation between theory and praxis and his inability to finish much of anything, citations of the German philosopher's work have become virtually obligatory in trendy American academic books on cultural studies.(1)

Such sentiment is hardly new. In a 1979 essay, "Waiter Benjamin on Photography" Heinz Puppe lamented the transformation of Benjamin into just "another fashionable authority to be cited ipse dixit." In a deathless 1988 essay in the New Criterion, Roger Kimball diagnosed an "October syndrome" infecting that high-profile academic journal, as well as a host of others, with a weakness for opaque theoretical proclamations, radical politics and a fine disregard for "the very idea of high culture." One of the chief vectors of obfuscating imported "Continental theory" and a lowbrow love of cultural detritus was none other than Waiter Benjamin. Among the books and articles referenced here, Linda Haverty Rugg makes apologetic reference to a "Benjamin cult," as does Susan Buck-Morss. This is an essay about some reasons, both good and bad, why Benjamin has come to be perceived as a required reference point in critical studies of the history of photography. I'll make my own, unapologetic position clear from the outset: this is also an essay about why I continue to find Benjamin's views on photography and history indispensable. Perhaps the "cult" should begin issuing membership cards.Benjamin's ambivalent but persistent position as a chief theorist of the relationship between "photography and society," to echo the title of a book by his contemporary, Gisele Freund, began to coalesce in the 1970s.(2) English translations of some of his "theoretical essays" first appeared in the late '60s, including several fragments on Baudelaire, "The Storyteller," and the oft-anthologized "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," which continues to be a staple of introductory courses in the history of photography. Translations varying in quality of "A Short History of Photography" appeared in the '70s, and citations of Benjamin's work became increasingly frequent in the pages of influential art periodicals such as Artforum, several dissident editors of which would found October in 1976. (In comparison, Siegfried Kracauer's equally important 1927 essay, "Photography" did not appear in English translation until 1993.) John Berger's Ways of Seeing (1972), itself based on a television series of the same name, and Susan Sontag's On Photography (1977) represented significant attempts to bring Benjamin's views to a wider audience. But as Charles Rosen observed in 1977, "Benjamin's work has been less an influential force than a quarry: he has been pillaged but not imitated," adding that "for those who are interested in Benjamin and who do not read German, the situation is gloomy"(3) With certain significant exceptions, his comments hold true today. The three-volume collection of Benjamin's writings announced by Belknap/Harvard has stalled at one published volume. Publication dates on the other two volumes have been pushed forward to 1999 and 2000, although these dates are by no means certain. The English translation of the Origin of German Tragic Drama is out of print. Try to find the lone battered copy of One-Way Street, and Other Writings in your local university library.


But despite the scatter-shot access to his work, and despite the notorious difficulty of his prose style, Benjamin became a touchstone for the most influential photography critics and historians of the 1980s. Drawing on the insights of the "Work of Art" essay, John Tagg emphasized the withering away of the "aura" associated with unique works of art in favor of a photographic "democracy of the image." While the Modernist history of photography would be marked by various, increasingly elaborate attempts to distinguish art photography from commercial and amateur productions, the real pictorial revolution effected by photography concerned the ease with which individual likeness could be systematically recorded, giving photography a key role in bureaucratic institutions, including the police station, the insane asylum, the school and the prison.(4) Tagg's analysis of the institutional uses of photography was complemented by Allan Sekula's increasingly historical deconstructions of the documentary authority of the "instrumental realist archive." Benjamin's famous proclamation about photographs as "scenes of crimes," Sekula argued, demonstrated the need to balance Benjamin's avant-garde interest in montage and its possibilities for provoking visual "shock" with a recognition of his rearguard investment in an empirical model of photography premised upon the "telling detail."(5)
 

But despite the scatter-shot access to his work, and despite the notorious difficulty of his prose style, Benjamin became a touchstone for the most influential photography critics and historians of the 1980s. Drawing on the insights of the "Work of Art" essay, John Tagg emphasized the withering away of the "aura" associated with unique works of art in favor of a photographic "democracy of the image." While the Modernist history of photography would be marked by various, increasingly elaborate attempts to distinguish art photography from commercial and amateur productions, the real pictorial revolution effected by photography concerned the ease with which individual likeness could be systematically recorded, giving photography a key role in bureaucratic institutions, including the police station, the insane asylum, the school and the prison.(4) Tagg's analysis of the institutional uses of photography was complemented by Allan Sekula's increasingly historical deconstructions of the documentary authority of the "instrumental realist archive." Benjamin's famous proclamation about photographs as "scenes of crimes," Sekula argued, demonstrated the need to balance Benjamin's avant-garde interest in montage and its possibilities for provoking visual "shock" with a recognition of his rearguard investment in an empirical model of photography premised upon the "telling detail."(5)


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Tags: photography  afterimage  walter benjamin 
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I'm using this sometimes to keep bits I have come across, things I have been reading online or other resources I want to come back to.  

comments are always welcome

especially if you start linking any interesting theory/comment/artists related thinking to my series works :-)

Mass Observation - Recording everyday life in Britain

The Original Mass Observation

Founders of Mass Observation
Charles Madge and Tom Harrisson
Book cover of First Year's Work by Mass Observation project
A publication by Mass Observation

The three founders and a strange coincidence

Three young men, part of a small group of like-minded friends, are credited with establishing Mass Observation. The origins resulted from a strange coincidence.

Early in 1937, Harrisson's one and only published poem appeared in the New Statesman on the same page as a letter from Madge and Jennings, in which they outlined their London-based project to encourage a national panel of volunteers to reply to regular questionnaires on a variety of matters. Interested by the similarity in aims to his own current anthropological study of the British, Harrisson contacted Madge and Jennings.

An anthropology of ourselves

Within the space of a month, the two projects, related in their ideals, although different in the techniques they employed to gather information, joined together under the title of Mass Observation. Their aim, stated in a further letter to the New Statesman, was to create an "anthropology of ourselves" - a study of the everyday lives of ordinary people in Britain.

Observers and diarists

Harrisson and a team of observers continued their study of life and people in Bolton (the Worktown Project), while Madge remained in London to organise the writing of the volunteer panel.

In Bolton, a team of paid investigators went into a variety of public situations: meetings, religious occasions, sporting and leisure activities, in the street and at work, and recorded people's behaviour and conversation in as much detail as possible. The material they produced is a varied documentary account of life in Britain.

The National Panel of Diarists was composed of people from all over Britain who either kept diaries or replied to regular open-ended questionnaires sent to them by the central team of Mass-Observers.

From social issues to market research

Although Jennings and then Madge moved on, Mass Observation continued to operate throughout the Second World War and into the early 1950s, producing a series of books about their work as well as thousands of reports. Gradually the emphasis shifted away from social issues towards consumer behaviour. In 1949, Mass Observation was registered as a limited company.

See our publications for further reading about the history of the Archive.

 

 Website by CommunitySites 

History is photography: the afterimage of Walter Benjamin

Posted by on Monday, April 5, 2010
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2479/is_n2_v26/ai_21187359/?tag=content;col1

History is photography: the afterimage of Walter Benjamin

Afterimage, Sept-Oct, 1998 by Jeannene M. PrzyblyskiIn a New York Times Book Review essay on Jay Parini's 1997 historical novel about the last days of Walter Benjamin, Benjamin's Crossing, the critic made annoyed reference to Benjamin's "leonine status in the eyes of many academics today" He complained that despite Benjamin's failure as both an academic and a features writer, his imperfect grasp of the relation between theory and praxis and his inability to finish much of anything, citations of the German philosopher's work have become virtually obligatory in trendy American academic books on cultural studies.(1)

Such sentiment is hardly new. In a 1979 essay, "Waiter Benjamin on Photography" Heinz Puppe lamented the transformation of Benjamin into just "another fashionable authority to be cited ipse dixit." In a deathless 1988 essay in the New Criterion, Roger Kimball diagnosed an "October syndrome" infecting that high-profile academic journal, as well as a host of others, with a weakness for opaque theoretical proclamations, radical politics and a fine disregard for "the very idea of high culture." One of the chief vectors of obfuscating imported "Continental theory" and a lowbrow love of cultural detritus was none other than Waiter Benjamin. Among the books and articles referenced here, Linda Haverty Rugg makes apologetic reference to a "Benjamin cult," as does Susan Buck-Morss. This is an essay about some reasons, both good and bad, why Benjamin has come to be perceived as a required reference point in critical studies of the history of photography. I'll make my own, unapologetic position clear from the outset: this is also an essay about why I continue to find Benjamin's views on photography and history indispensable. Perhaps the "cult" should begin issuing membership cards.Benjamin's ambivalent but persistent position as a chief theorist of the relationship between "photography and society," to echo the title of a book by his contemporary, Gisele Freund, began to coalesce in the 1970s.(2) English translations of some of his "theoretical essays" first appeared in the late '60s, including several fragments on Baudelaire, "The Storyteller," and the oft-anthologized "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," which continues to be a staple of introductory courses in the history of photography. Translations varying in quality of "A Short History of Photography" appeared in the '70s, and citations of Benjamin's work became increasingly frequent in the pages of influential art periodicals such as Artforum, several dissident editors of which would found October in 1976. (In comparison, Siegfried Kracauer's equally important 1927 essay, "Photography" did not appear in English translation until 1993.) John Berger's Ways of Seeing (1972), itself based on a television series of the same name, and Susan Sontag's On Photography (1977) represented significant attempts to bring Benjamin's views to a wider audience. But as Charles Rosen observed in 1977, "Benjamin's work has been less an influential force than a quarry: he has been pillaged but not imitated," adding that "for those who are interested in Benjamin and who do not read German, the situation is gloomy"(3) With certain significant exceptions, his comments hold true today. The three-volume collection of Benjamin's writings announced by Belknap/Harvard has stalled at one published volume. Publication dates on the other two volumes have been pushed forward to 1999 and 2000, although these dates are by no means certain. The English translation of the Origin of German Tragic Drama is out of print. Try to find the lone battered copy of One-Way Street, and Other Writings in your local university library.


But despite the scatter-shot access to his work, and despite the notorious difficulty of his prose style, Benjamin became a touchstone for the most influential photography critics and historians of the 1980s. Drawing on the insights of the "Work of Art" essay, John Tagg emphasized the withering away of the "aura" associated with unique works of art in favor of a photographic "democracy of the image." While the Modernist history of photography would be marked by various, increasingly elaborate attempts to distinguish art photography from commercial and amateur productions, the real pictorial revolution effected by photography concerned the ease with which individual likeness could be systematically recorded, giving photography a key role in bureaucratic institutions, including the police station, the insane asylum, the school and the prison.(4) Tagg's analysis of the institutional uses of photography was complemented by Allan Sekula's increasingly historical deconstructions of the documentary authority of the "instrumental realist archive." Benjamin's famous proclamation about photographs as "scenes of crimes," Sekula argued, demonstrated the need to balance Benjamin's avant-garde interest in montage and its possibilities for provoking visual "shock" with a recognition of his rearguard investment in an empirical model of photography premised upon the "telling detail."(5)
 

But despite the scatter-shot access to his work, and despite the notorious difficulty of his prose style, Benjamin became a touchstone for the most influential photography critics and historians of the 1980s. Drawing on the insights of the "Work of Art" essay, John Tagg emphasized the withering away of the "aura" associated with unique works of art in favor of a photographic "democracy of the image." While the Modernist history of photography would be marked by various, increasingly elaborate attempts to distinguish art photography from commercial and amateur productions, the real pictorial revolution effected by photography concerned the ease with which individual likeness could be systematically recorded, giving photography a key role in bureaucratic institutions, including the police station, the insane asylum, the school and the prison.(4) Tagg's analysis of the institutional uses of photography was complemented by Allan Sekula's increasingly historical deconstructions of the documentary authority of the "instrumental realist archive." Benjamin's famous proclamation about photographs as "scenes of crimes," Sekula argued, demonstrated the need to balance Benjamin's avant-garde interest in montage and its possibilities for provoking visual "shock" with a recognition of his rearguard investment in an empirical model of photography premised upon the "telling detail."(5)


follow the link at the top to continue reading
 

Next post: Escape from the...

Tags: photography  afterimage  walter benjamin 
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Something New!

Lytro Launches to Transform Photography with $50M in Venture Funds (TCTV)
Sarah Lacy
Jun 21, 2011

Love photos but utterly bored by wave after waveof iPhone photo sharing apps? Lytro is the company for you. This is also the company for anyone who thinks Silicon Valley has fallen into a rut of innovation-less posing. And it’s the company for anyone who complains that the Valley is more about media and marketing than brass-knuckles, hardcore technology. This is the company that jaded, cranky, rap-lyric quoting investor Ben Horowitz says, “blew my brains to bits.”

In short, Lytro is developing a new type of camera that dramatically changes photography for the first time since the 1800s. Rather than just capturing one plane of light, it captures the entire light field around a picture, all in one shot taken on a single device. A light field includes every beam of light in every direction at every point in time. Experimentation in this field started in the mid-1990s at Stanford with 100 cameras in one room. Lytro’s innovation is making it small enough to fit in your pocket. Really.

As a result you can refocus photos after the fact, wiggle around the orientation, and even show the photos in 3D. Get excited, Jason Kincaid, because it’s not too far away from those 3D moving photographs in the Harry Potter movies. The company has raised $50 million so far from NEA, K9 Ventures, Greylock Partners and Andreessen Horowitz.

Check it out in this photo below by Richard Koci Hernandez. Click around to see Elvis come into focus in the foreground:

Here’s some of what Horowitz wrote on his blog about the company:

“People often refer to taking a picture as capturing the moment, but conventional photography does not really capture the moment. It captures one angle, one set of light, and one focus of the moment. If you are a professional photographer, you might capture the best parts of the moment. If you are someone like me, you most certainly will not. With Ren’s light field camera, you actually capture the moment or at least all of the light that visually represents the moment.

Once you have captured the moment, you can go back at any time and get the picture that you want.

Essentially, you can take the picture you wish you would have taken after the fact. If you are used to the old paradigm, it’s like travelling backwards through time.”

Of course there are big risks with any business this jaw-droppingly innovative. Will they be able to get the price point low enough that people will buy the camera? Right now, the closest Ng will commit on price is somewhere between north of $1 and less than $10,000. That’s a pretty broad ballpark. We won’t be able to see the devices until the also vague “sometime this year.” An equally important question is whether the user experience be as simple as the company claims.

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