In his essay, “The Work of Art In The Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, Walter Benjamin attempts to mark something specific about the modern age and the effects of modernity on works of art. He writes of the loss of the aura through the mechanical reproduction of art itself. The aura for Benjamin represents the originality and authenticity of a work of art that has not been reproduced. A painting has an aura while a photograph does not. The photograph is an image of an image while the painting remains original. On film, the sense of the aura is lost. Benjamin writes of the loss of the aura as a loss of a singular authority within a work of art itself. He goes further indicating that the removal of authority within the original work of art indicates a loss of authority. As an example he describes how a cameraman intervenes with what we see in a way that a painter can never do. A cameraman directs the eye towards a specific place and part of the story often leaning to a particular side and leaving other parts out. Benjamin expresses that film dulls our perception towards the work of art by introducing distraction as a mode of reception. For this reason Benjamin indicates that the aura is dead and only exists in an improbable and mystical space. For him, a distance from the aura is a good thing. The loss of the aura has the potential to open up the politicization of art, allowing us to raise political questions in response to the reproducible images that we are surrounded by. He makes it clear that in this new age of mechanical reproduction the contemplation of a screen and the nature of the film itself has changed in such a way that the individual no longer contemplates the film but rather, the film contemplates them. Thus, the actual structure of perception has changed. Within the reproducibility of images there is now a submission towards the film itself. Benjamin exposes that in and of it self this shift is a symptom and not a cause of something terrible that is occurring in society.