Walter Benjamin - The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Walter Benjamin’s book The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction is one of our core reading books for this module, visual communication, personally I have found this book a little hard going, but have been able to get through a few chapters, he says that art has always been reproducible, anything man made can be reproduced, this reproduction can be used to a an implement for teaching, ultimately it can and will be used to make money. Ancient technological reproductions were usually made from casting or embossing, coins are one such example. Drawings were reproduced long before paintings, due to wood engraving or graphic art. Wood engraving then changed to cooper plate engraving and then lithography in the late 19^th century, this was replaced only decades later by photography. Photographic reproductions speed up to a point that is was able to capture images in sync with speech.

Regarding the reproduction, this is still very much unique within its own surroundings, this idea I personally quite like, and also its ownerships and therefore its changes in environments. Manual reproductions were usually written of or branded as fake yet with the modern reproduction, the copy is more autonomous in relation to the original.

Benjamin talks of genuineness and how the very perfection or refinement of its being since its creation to its duration through time and the event that the original holds, for instance a film slide.

This is my reckoning of the first few chapters of the book and one that I have found challenging to digest, however after re-reading elements and adapting to Benjamin’s style of writing, have found some of this to be quite interesting and look forward to reading more of this body of work.