Mechanical reproduction additionally degrades the original’s authority because it places the copy in situations that the original would never be. A photograph can focus on qualities of an original that are unattainable to the naked eye and through certain processes, like slow motion and enlargement, can also capture images, which completely escape natural vision. Benjamin brings the example of photography to explain why that is. This does not happen with mechanical reproduction which is largely independent.
#Benjamin aura definition manual
Manual reproduction (forgery) has always allowed the original to retain its authority as it heavily depends on the original’s qualities and existence.
The next point in Benjamin’s essay is differentiating between manual and mechanical reproduction. Holtorf’s understanding of authenticity focuses on historical objects and the way we experience authenticity threw an object’s ‘pastness’ (5). A different opinion is presented by Cornelius Holtorf (4) who believes that authenticity is a quality of a historical object that can be easily reproduced in the present. Because of this exclusive characteristic of the original, Benjamin claims that “the whole sphere of authenticity is outside technical- and, of course not only technical- reproducibility” (3). These qualities can be retrieved with various scientific methods and would never be found on any reproduction. This element is the original’s unique presence in time and space and entails the visible marks left by the passage of time and the history of which the object has been subjected to throughout its existence. The aura of the authenticīenjamin’s essay begins by stating that every original has an element which can never be captured by any reproduction no matter how faithfully it copies the original image. Dutton (2) defines nominal authenticity as “the correct identification of the origins, authorship, or provenance of an object, ensuring, as the term implies, that an object of aesthetic experience is properly named”. This is called nominal authenticity and is the one that at a first glance Benjamin refers to in his essay, although at times he brings up issues that address both types of authenticity. The second authenticity is the one standing on the other side of forgery and fakery. This authenticity is the one that Hegel, Heidegger and many existential philosophers have much struggled to define and understand. Expressive authenticity refers to the ability to be faithful in ones own self, to express genuine qualities and possess inherent and self originating authority.
It is important to clarify that the term authenticity may be used to describe two separate things- nominal and expressive authenticity (1). Benjamin developed this concept in his most celebrated essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, whose most central ideas I will present in the next few lines. Walter Benjamin’s concept of the aura of the authentic is one of the key ideas when it comes to issues of authenticity.
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