Analysis of "Family" through the reading of Benjamin's essay.

There is something to be said about one's ambivalence to the medium of photography: On the one hand, photography is the harbinger of the death of the "aura" one feels in particular with traditional art (and with it comes the end of "uniqueness"); on the other, it has the power through its sheer reproducibility to bring art out of its context and closer to the masses.

Here, the woman, with, and I must presume here, her two daughters and their pets, stand in front of the sweeping bucolic vista in the shadows of a mountainous range. The flattened distance between the fore and background has robbed it of awe-inspiring grandeur (the “aura”): it is at once both near and far. By observing the photo, I am not aware of the location, only the sense of place gleaned from the scenery; I can only sense the time from their clothing, the most telling piece being the cotton denim dungarees of the older child, which to me would suggest a mid 20th century garment. The figures are present, but at the same time removed, out of context.

Consequently, we are ever reminded of the intrusion of the machine into reality. Its severest representation is in the inclusion of the full negative frame as well as the partial appearance of the next frame. It is the essence of the photograph’s commerciality – this is the only authentic part. Any print made off the negative cannot, by the very nature of its reproducibility, be an “original”.

But let us venture that this perhaps may be part of a reel, a frame in a series of sequential frames that comprise a film. As a whole, we would not be aware of the penetration of the machine, of the camera. Thorough editing cleans up the act and we are left with a well-polished façade – one tends to be overwhelmed by the movie, forgetting all the editing that has produced it. Yet here we are given the evidence that this SINGLE frame, still and unclean – one might even ask whether the fine knife-like cuts are results of neglect – here we are confronted with the fact that that single frame is only a photograph. That the intrinsic aspect of the mirage is captured by a MACHINE – and to become a film it MUST, therefore, be further manipulated.


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The images I chose follows.