View allAll Photos Tagged walterbenjamin
"She said: What is history?
And he said: History is an angel being blown backwards into the future
He said: History is a pile of debris
And the angel wants to go back and fix things
To repair the things that have been broken
But there is a storm blowing from Paradise
And the storm keeps blowing the angel backwards into the future
And this storm, this storm is called Progress"
- Laurie Anderson, "The Dream Before (for Walter Benjamin)"
Family photograph c. early 1950s, original photographer unknown. This version cropped and edited in 2021.
Mitakon Speedmaster at F0.95. "Aura" is the term Walter Benjamin used in the 1930s to define what he thought was characteristic for a genuine and unique piece of art - in contradistinction to mass-produced images or copies of this piece such as photographies or prints. He thought as well that the viewer of the original artwork would be absorbed by it and forced to contemplate. When it comes to mechanically or digitally reproduced copies of this artwork however, this photo for example, the viewers would just absorb it and the mode of doing this would not be contemplation, but distraction. This is a very important distinction, in particular with regard to the impact social media have. And yet, I find myself struggling with this line of thought. Here is the reason:
When I produce an image such as this one, there is no physical and unique original that could be distinguished from the digitally reproduced image. In other words, the digitally reproduced image is identical to the digital image I had created in the first place. Logically, and following Benjamin, this means that either all these digitally reproduced images have the potential of having "Aura" or none of them. Contemplation versus distraction run into the same kind of problem. What do you think?
Es troben damunt el túnel Passatges a Walter Benjamin a Portbou
my feet will want to walk to where you are sleeping
but
I shall go on living
Pablo Neruda
Piano Sonata in G Minor, K. 8 · Serge Babayan
Scarlatti: Piano Sonatas
Taken in the Walter Benjamin memorial - Port-bou, French-Spanish boarder.
>>> View On Black and Large <<<
>>> Music <<<
Cita de Walter Benjamin al vidre: És una tasca més ardua honorar la memòria dels éssers anònims que la de les persones cèlebres. La construcció històrica es consagra a la memòria dels qui no tenen nom."
Por Ignacio Caballero García y Blanca Gago Domínguez.
Acerca del libro / El libro en La Central
Diseño de la portada: Miguel R. Cabot
in a locomotive on a desert rail siding.
Out there on those desert spurs and mountain roads, railroaders use to put anything on the line with traction. Behind the lead unit there could be any kind of funky slug. Old as hell, beat to shit locomotives with nothing going for them except the wheel trucks with their traction motors pulling against the steel rails while sucking power from the MU. They are undead machines clothed in some flag’s faded industrial coating outside but inside they are ruined ghosts of rolling derelicts. That’s where the crew lets you ride if your sister knows how to smile. Nothing, not even money, could get me and my camera a dusty hot ride to Vegas in a wicked-cool, old slug faster than Jilly’s personal zeitgeist.
The skills of sexual polity came early and easy for her (like most of the women in my family). It is good for the world that we are wanderers and not capitalists and social climbers. All those beautiful faces could have started wars and built empires. There has always been way too much of that godless shit anyway. Like all my fathers kin, like me, Jilly just wanted to find the next piece of scenery and (because she is woman) occasionally drink for free at the bar.
We were not fated to suffer the competitive prodding of women with momentous social ambitions; not us, not this family. We are way to restless for the corrosive kind of concentrated effort it takes to go big in the material world. In this blood it isn't where you are going that matters. Fools are convinced that origins and destinations make history but "history is a pile of debris". It is the going, the fact that we are moving from where we were that makes sense. Never rest. Never believe in the destination and don't trust the past. The story is always about the journey.
Maybe the art of photography is the best way to presentify the past, just like Walter Benjamin would like us to do....
Let´s make History.
Let´s make Photography.
Portbou - Catalogne - Espagne.
Le philosophe allemand Walter Benjamin s'est suicidé à Portbou, alors qu'il séjournait à l'hôtel Francia, le 27 septembre 1940, persuadé d'être bientôt livré à la Gestapo. Une œuvre commémorative du sculpteur israélien Dani Karavan intitulée "Passagen" a été érigée en sa mémoire, et à celle de tous les exilés de toutes les guerres, à l'occasion du centenaire de la naissance du philosophe en 1992.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
German philosopher Walter Benjamin died and was buried in 1940 in Portbou. Beside the cimetery is a monument in his honor, by Dani Karavan.
Devant le cimetière de Portbou - Catalogne - Espagne.
Le philosophe allemand Walter Benjamin s'est suicidé à Portbou, alors qu'il séjournait à l'hôtel Francia, le 27 septembre 1940, persuadé d'être bientôt livré à la Gestapo. Une œuvre commémorative du sculpteur israélien Dani Karavan intitulée "Passagen" a été érigée en sa mémoire, et à celle de tous les exilés de toutes les guerres, à l'occasion du centenaire de la naissance du philosophe en 1992.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
German philosopher Walter Benjamin died and was buried in 1940 in Portbou. Beside the cimetery is a monument in his honor, by Dani Karavan.
«What is, strictly speaking, an aura? The strange interweaving of place and time: a unique sensation was given, no matter how close the subject in question was. To glance during a summer afternoon's rest along the line of a mountain range on a horizon or branch, in the shadow of which a vacationer is located, while an instant or an hour is involved in their appearance, is to inhale the aura of these mountains, this branch. The desire to “bring” things closer to oneself, or rather, to the masses, is the same longing desire of modern people as overcoming the unique in any situation through its reproduction. From day to day, the need to own an object in the immediate vicinity in its image, rather in reproduction, is becoming increasingly irresistible.»
Walter Benjamin
from the series 'inscapes' | "His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe that keeps piling ruin upon ruin and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress" (Raymond Barglow).
Portbou - Catalogne - Espagne.
Le philosophe allemand Walter Benjamin s'est suicidé à Portbou, alors qu'il séjournait à l'hôtel Francia, le 27 septembre 1940, persuadé d'être bientôt livré à la Gestapo. Une œuvre commémorative du sculpteur israélien Dani Karavan intitulée "Passagen" a été érigée en sa mémoire, et à celle de tous les exilés de toutes les guerres, à l'occasion du centenaire de la naissance du philosophe en 1992.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
German philosopher Walter Benjamin died and was buried in 1940 in Portbou. Beside the cimetery is a monument in his honor, by Dani Karavan.
Playing around with lenses and light this morning.
Have had this little bear for so long I can't remember when he came to live with us.
The world is full of wonderful traditions, ceremonies, doctrines . . .
I'm blessed with friends from all walks of life and always honor each individual's belief system.
In certain Native American cultures "Zuni Fetishes" are cherished as symbols of protection and good luck.
In this case, the "bear" would represent strength, introspection and the spiritual journey of life.
Zuni fetishes are not manufactured as each carving is a handmade work of art.
Thinking of my dear flickr friend who has just passed on, unexpectedly. We had hoped to visit him in New Mexico some day.
I think Ross would have enjoyed this post. Below I have placed his last upload to flickr.
“Death is the sanction of everything the story-teller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death.”
~ Walter Benjamin ~
note: click on "view more comments" to see Ross's last post.
"Passatges" (Passages) is a homage by Dani Karavan to the German Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin, who commited suicide in Portbou (Catalonia) in 1940 fleeing from the Nazis
1. Apparitions hover (vignette-like) over my right shoulder. Chill in this shoulder. In this context: "I have the feeling that there are 4 in the room apart from myself." (Avoidance of the necessity to include myself.)
(W. Benjamin, On Hascisc)
*
E.
*
(#1 in this contest: www.flickr.com/groups/2168355@N23/discuss/72157633359079831/)
*
FEATURED: republicx.tumblr.com/post/49576441582/portraits-in-black-...
Trancoso - Bahia - Brasil
"A fotografia tem uma potência analítica, ela é capaz de revelar algo oculto à visão
Só a fotografia revela esse inconsciente ótico, como só a psicanálise revela o inconsciente pulsional".
Walter Benjamin
Copyright © Marcelo Nacinovic, all rights reserved
Reprodução e uso sem autorização proibidos ® Todos os direitos reservados
Lei de Direitos Autorais 9.610/98
Images inclosed on international copyright laws
What quiet is.
More magnanimous in rhythms
The path of the departed person is the soul of the conversation they led.
Still the same world - and yet one has patience
*
old pics + reading Benjamin + scanned film
[click]
“Mickey Mouse,” Fragment by Walter Benjamin, 1931.
from a conversation with Gustav Gluck and Kurt Weill
"Property relations in Mickey Mouse cartoons: here we see for the first time that it is possible to have one’s own arm, even one’s own body, stolen.
The route taken by Mickey Mouse is more like that of a file in an office than it is like that of a marathon runner.
In these films, mankind makes preparations to survive civilization.
Mickey Mouse proves that a creature can still survive even when it has thrown off all resemblance to a human being. He disrupts the entire hierarchy of creatures that is supposed to culminate in mankind.
These films disavow experience more radically than ever before. In such a world, it is not worthwhile to have experience.
Similarity to folk tales. Not since fairy tales have the most important and most vital events been evoked more unsymbolically and more unatmospherically. All Mickey Mouse films are founded on the motif of leaving home in order to learn what fear is.
So the explanation for the huge popularity of these films is not mechanization, their form; nor is it a misunderstanding. It is simply the fact that the public recognizes its own life in them."
“Who killed Walter Benjamin” www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRXRNUkYLTk&feature=related
Passage 1
Dani Karavan (born 1930 in Tel Aviv) is an Israeli sculptor best known for special memorials and monuments, he created the passage, a tribute to Walter Benjamin (1990-94, Portbou, Catalonia)
In the common grave of Portbou's cementery there are the remains of the German Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin, who commited suicide in the north of Catalonia in 1940 fleeing from the Nazis
The safety glass is engraved:
Schwerer ist es, das Gedächtnis der Namenlosen zu ehren als das der Berühmten.
Dem Gedächtnis der Namenlosen ist die historische Konstruktion geweiht.
Walter Benjamin, G.S. I, 1241
(It is heavier to honour the memory of the nameless than that of the famous ones.
The historical construction is dedicated to the memory of the nameless ones.
Walter Benjamin, G.S. I, 1241)
Dani Karavan (born 1930 in Tel Aviv) is an Israeli sculptor best known
for special memorials and monuments, he created the passage,
a tribute to Walter Benjamin (1990-94, Portbou, Catalonia)
On the wall of the cemetery of Portbou, Spain
In September 1940, given the threat of extradition to the Secret State Police (Gestapo) takes Walter Benjamin with an overdose of morphine in the Spanish border Port Bou life.
Dani Karavan (born 1930 in Tel Aviv) is an Israeli sculptor best known
for special memorials and monuments, he created the passage,
a tribute to Walter Benjamin (1990-94, Portbou, Catalonia)