- The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin
- Extracts from Camera Lucida by Roland Barths
- What has Occurred Only Once: Barthes's Winter Garden/Boltanski's Archives of the Dead by Marjorie Perloff
- Benjamin and the Political Economy of the Photograph by W. J. T. Mitchell
Post a short (two – three paragraph) synopsis of the readings on the class blog. In addition to each text synopsis you are to provide a brief autobiographical summation of the author.
Bring to class quotes and subjects to discuss from the readings
For the essay of Walter Benjamin explains the art of time and how it can be easily be manipulated. He talks about the aura of art work.. which I don’t understand how aura has to do anything in art/ photography. He has stated that art has lost some of its authenticity which I currently don’t understand on how art can lose authenticity in general. The only way you could lose it is when the image/ art has been reproduced many times but I do not think that it can loose the authenticity if hasn’t been reproduced. I though the ready was interesting it got me to think about reproduction of the image ad authenticity that I never thought of.
ReplyDeleteFor the essay of extracts from camera lucida by Roland Barthes he describes photography in different types of media. In the essay is about Barthes experiences with photography. While I was reading the essay he develops an original view regarding photography's relation to time. He sets up three roles that he describes the Operator, the Spectator, and the Spectrum.. I don’t understand on how Roland Barthes section out photography in the these three roles and how he section them off in the roles that he did I also thought it was hard to understand.
What has Occurred only once she talks about Bathes and Boltanski’s photographs and she talks about the existence in time. On how once a photograph has been shot it no longer exists. The way she explains it the photographs has just be transformed into an object and that the photograph can mean many things. She talks about how you can not go back in time when you took the original photograph was taken. We know that we cant go back in time but you have the object/ image to prove / remember that exact time you took the picture.
In the essay of Benjamin and the political economy of the photograph he talks about his Marxist theory. He debates between idealism and empiricism. Benjamin stated that a photograph is a piece of historical artwork takes away from the original. I think he is right when he said that because when you take a photograph it belongs to you and that it is the original if there is only one of that is it becomes more valuable but if it is massed produced everybody can get that work. Like for example the Mona Lisa has been massed produced I can get it any where and it changes the mood of the image if you where to go see tne original you wouldn’t get a wow factor because you have already seen it and you would wonder if it was really original image
Roland Barths – is a French critic, social theorist ,philosopher, and semiotican has theory’s of structuralism, semiotics, existentialism, Marxism and post-structuralism.
Marjorie Perloff - U.S. poetry critic. She writes about major currents of modernist and postmodernist activity. She was born on September 28, 1931 in Australia.
Walter Benjamin - was born in Berlin on July 15, 1892. He is a literary critic and also a aesthetic theory and Western Marxism