Abstract

Walter Benjamin made many comments on contemporary arts. In those comments, he consistently criticized Albert Renger=Patzsch, especially his collection of photographs, The World is Beautiful. This paper considers why Benjamin criticized Renger=Patzsch from the viewpoint of the concept of aura and what elements of his photographs Benjamin thought dangerous in relation to the political aestheticism of fascism. Benjamin distinguished between the aura of work of art and that of commodity, and gave negative evaluation to the latter. Thus in previous studies, the former has been taken as authentic while the latter as fake. And it has been argued that there remains no authentic aura after the "decay of aura". In contrast, I interpret aura as having broader implications, i.e., as a "reactivation of mythic power of objects by empathy". So I think that the aura was interrupted by the shock of the invention of reproductive technology and, through this shock, was transformed from that of work of art to that of commodity while maintaining its mythic power. The aura of Renger=Patzsch's photographes depends precisely on this mythic power transmitted to the world of commodity