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> But now let us follow the subsequent development of photography. What do we see? It has become more and more subtle, more and more modern, and the result is t
by PavlovsCat 7y ago
> But now let us follow the subsequent development of photography. What do we see? It has become more and more subtle, more and more modern, and the result is that it is now incapable of photographing a tenement or a rubbish heap without transfiguring it. Not to mention a river dam or an electric cable factory: in front of these, photography can now only say, 'How beautiful.' The World is Beautiful - that is the title of the well-known picture book by Renger-Patzsch in which we see New Objectivity photography at its peak. It has succeeded in turning abject poverty itself, by handling it in a modish, technically perfect way, into an object of enjoyment. For it is an economic function of photography to supply the masses, by modish processing, with matter which previously eluded mass consumption.
-- Walter Benjamin, lecture at the Institute for the Study of Fascism in Paris, 27th April 1934
> The relatively new trouble with mass society is perhaps even more serious, but not because of the masses themselves, but because this society is essentially a consumers’ society where leisure time is used no longer for self-perfection or acquisition of more social status, but for more and more consumption and more and more entertainment… To believe that such a society will become more “cultured” as time goes on and education has done its work, is, I think, a fatal mistake. The point is that a consumers’ society cannot possibly know how to take care of a world and the things which belong exclusively to the space of worldly appearances, because its central attitude toward all objects, the attitude of consumption, spells ruin to everything it touches.
-- Hannah Arendt, "Between Past and Future"
- new2628 7y agoNice finds, and both quotes strike me as quite insightful and prescient.
- PavlovsCat 7y agoThe article made me think of the first one, then I thought of the second one and added it to explain what might be wrong with turning everything into an object of consumption. To be honest, I don't know a lot about the work of Walter Benjamin, maybe he also had more to say on this. But I do know that Hannah Arendt was on to a lot, and is as timely as ever. I love and recommend her more than I can say. > When books or pictures in reproduction are thrown on the market cheaply and attain huge sales, this does not affect the nature of the objects in question. But their nature is affected when these objects themselves are changed rewritten, condensed, digested, reduced to kitsch in reproduction, or in preparation for the movies. This does not mean that culture spreads to the masses, but that culture is being destroyed in order to yield entertainment. > The result of this is not disintegration but decay, and those who actively promote it are not the Tin Pan Alley composers but a special kind of intellectuals, often well read and well informed, whose sole function is to organize, disseminate, and change cultural objects in order to persuade the masses that Hamlet can be as entertaining as My Fair Lady, and perhaps educational as well. There are many great authors of the past who have survived centuries of oblivion and neglect, but it is still an open question whether they will be able to survive an entertaining version of what they have to say. -- Hannah Arendt, "The Crisis in Culture - Its Social and Its Political Significance", http://www.celinecondorelli.eu/files/arendtcrisisinculture_v2.pdf http://www.celinecondorelli.eu/files/arendtcrisisinculture_v...
- Bantros 7y agoThanks, second one rings true for me