Benjamin

I found Benjamin’s essay very interesting because my father is a photographer and often photographs paintings for an artist to then produce prints. When an artist brings a painting over to my father’s studio, there is a different feeling about the original, a different “aura” then what a print would feel like, which is exactly what Benjamin was talking about. A few times, the piece of art my dad is photographing is one of his friends, and they usually give my dad one of the prints. The artist will then put a number at the bottom of the print, which represents what copy out of the series that were made. For example it may be the 7^th print out of the 100 that were made. The 1^st copy is usually the most valued, the most “authentic” print. Benjamin says, “From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the “authentic” print makes no sense” (23). Usually the fewer prints made in a series, the more valuable those prints become. It seems that this process of numbering has no purpose after reading Benjamin’s essay.

My mother and father are both artists and many of my extended family members are artists as well; therefore art is something that is really valued among my family. Pieces of art have been passed down through generations and those pieces have been cherished. Benjamin quotes, “Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be. The unique existence of the work of art determined by history to which it is subject throughout the time of its existence” (20). Many of the pieces of art in my house tell a story, they have been somewhere else, and maybe even somewhere else before that. When many prints of something are made, that story is lost.