The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

A short essay, revised several times between 1935 and 1939, asking what happens to art when photography and film can copy and distribute it without limit. Benjamin argues that a traditional artwork had an aura: its unique presence in one time and place, which tied it to ritual and tradition and kept viewers at a distance. Mechanical reproduction strips away that aura and shifts the work from cult value to exhibition value. Film is his main example. The camera, through close-ups, slow motion and editing, reveals an optical unconscious that the eye alone cannot see, and audiences take in films in a state of distraction rather than reverent contemplation. Benjamin sees both danger and promise here. The new media can be used by fascism, which aestheticises politics and ends in the glorification of war, but they also open the way, he hopes, to a politicised art that belongs to the masses.

Its ideas of aura, reproduction and distracted viewing remain the standard starting point for thinking about photography, film and now digital copies and social media.