著者

城丸 美香

出版者

美学会

雑誌

美学 (ISSN:05200962)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.54, no.4, pp.28-41, 2004

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According to Walter Benjamin, the photography is the first revolutionary reproduction technology, and the invention of it has brought a certain critical situation, "a poverty of experience" or "a decline of experience". It has progressed with the change in the communicative form from the story to the information. The photography reproduces traumatic shocks, and it has two opposite functions, repetition and reproduction. On the one hand, repeating shocks is a fragmentation of time and space. On the other, reproducing shocks is a reconstruction of a new spatial-temporal order by re-arranging those fragments. And this re-arrangement (=construction) is done by means of words (characters). The construction is that people read a (non-sensitive) similarity between words and fragments of various things which are released from all relations, and by doing so, set them in a new context where things can expose their new meanings. This new context is the place where things can gain the actuality. The function of photography is to form the space where all possible words can exist toward an image, and Benjamin found out the possibility of new collective experience in this space.

著者

城丸 美香

出版者

美学会

雑誌

美學 (ISSN:05200962)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.58, no.1, pp.15-28, 2007-06-30

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Walter Benjamin made many comments on contemporary arts. In those comments, he consistently criticized Albert Renger=Patzsch, especially his collection of photographs, The World is Beautiful. This paper considers why Benjamin criticized Renger=Patzsch from the viewpoint of the concept of aura and what elements of his photographs Benjamin thought dangerous in relation to the political aestheticism of fascism. Benjamin distinguished between the aura of work of art and that of commodity, and gave negative evaluation to the latter. Thus in previous studies, the former has been taken as authentic while the latter as fake. And it has been argued that there remains no authentic aura after the "decay of aura". In contrast, I interpret aura as having broader implications, i.e., as a "reactivation of mythic power of objects by empathy". So I think that the aura was interrupted by the shock of the invention of reproductive technology and, through this shock, was transformed from that of work of art to that of commodity while maintaining its mythic power. The aura of Renger=Patzsch's photographes depends precisely on this mythic power transmitted to the world of commodity.

著者

城丸 美香

出版者

美学会

雑誌

美学 (ISSN:05200962)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.58, no.1, pp.15-28, 2007-06-30 (Released:2017-05-22)

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Walter Benjamin made many comments on contemporary arts. In those comments, he consistently criticized Albert Renger=Patzsch, especially his collection of photographs, The World is Beautiful. This paper considers why Benjamin criticized Renger=Patzsch from the viewpoint of the concept of aura and what elements of his photographs Benjamin thought dangerous in relation to the political aestheticism of fascism. Benjamin distinguished between the aura of work of art and that of commodity, and gave negative evaluation to the latter. Thus in previous studies, the former has been taken as authentic while the latter as fake. And it has been argued that there remains no authentic aura after the "decay of aura". In contrast, I interpret aura as having broader implications, i.e., as a "reactivation of mythic power of objects by empathy". So I think that the aura was interrupted by the shock of the invention of reproductive technology and, through this shock, was transformed from that of work of art to that of commodity while maintaining its mythic power. The aura of Renger=Patzsch's photographes depends precisely on this mythic power transmitted to the world of commodity.

著者

城丸 美香

出版者

美学会

雑誌

美学 (ISSN:05200962)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.57, no.3, pp.68, 2006-12-31 (Released:2017-05-22)