Monday, November 25, 2013

The dark side...

Although I happened to have gotten confused about what reading to do last week, I think it actually worked out for the best because I learned some new things during and after class, which you may find interesting. During class we discussed Benjamin’s whole idea. We began with the initial concept of the “aura” and how he believes it begins to lose its meaning in the “age of mechanical reproduction”. In this aspect, I would have to disagree. I feel that the aura of a piece of art is present no matter how often it may be reproduced and propagated throughout the world. I am sure many of us have replicas of pieces of art in our homes. No, they are not the originals but they will do. Having gone to the museums and seen the originals in person, I can say that I appreciate them even more. I can definitely tell the difference between the original and my copy in a frame. Of course, Benjamin’s discussion takes us further…into politics.


He feels that the use of technology has led to a negative affect on art. There is a dark side of the force (yes….star wars reference). What I found interesting was that after this discussion in class, we had a guest speaker come into our French seminar to discuss photography and literature. During his presentation, he focused on Barthes and his views on photography, the capturing of the moment, the feelings we encounter when looking at a photo. He then went on to show us two pictures. Although he placed the photographs side by side, they were taken by two different photographers for two very different reasons. One of them struck me more than the other (of course, I don’t remember who took the picture or I would have placed it on the blog….so anyone that was in that seminar that remember, send it my way). Anyway, it was a picture taken by a photographer during the Nazi regime. The photograph had a picture of a man, nicely dressed, and his pure bred dog. They were both looking away from the camera at different things. Looking at this picture, I felt cold. They were so statue like and frigid which is what I would have imagined them to be (of course, not the dog but as some people say, the dog can look like the owner). He then informed us that that picture was actually not accepted by the Nazis because they did not feel it represented them and the photographer was asked to stop. The reason I brought this up is because it reminded me of our discussion in class and how Benjamin did not like how art was used (or duplicated) to take on different things rather than maintain its aura. In this case, I feel like we can clearly understand Benjamin. The photographer had an intention, which was to capture the moment showing the average Nazi in its true form, but because it did not align with the Nazis intentions, they did not want it. They did not like the aura present and did not want it duplicated and spread about.

No comments:

Post a Comment