Walter Benjamin's 1936 essay ''The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction'' revolutionized the way we look at the social function of the work of art, and the paradigms through which we appreciate it. Using this legendary essay--and its idea of the "aura" in unique works of art--as a springboard, the essays collected in Benjamin's Blind Spot apply Benjamin's insights to a wide range of topics. Subjects range from Benjamin's use of hashish to an analysis of Woody Allen's Zelig, from Wallace Stevens to the early recordings of Elvis Presley, and from the dark epiphanies behind Jackson Pollock's work to the question of whether Benjamin's model is even relevant to contemporary issues. In the same volume, presented in the text's margins, is The Manual of Lost Ideas, a massive manuscript that arrived at the Institute of Cultural Inquiry via an anonymous bequest in 1955. Speculated to be thousands of years old, this is the first time the Manual has been published in over two centuries.

Benjamin's Blind Spot: Walter Benjamin and the Premature Death of Aura

Arts & Photography

Kuppers, Petra

Strathausen, Carsten

Rhodes, Colin

Gross, David

Bell, Vance

Brottman, David

Gantman, Martin

Hertz, Erich

Patke, Rajeev

Smith, Marquard

History & Criticism

Institute of Cultural Inquiry

W.G. Sebald's books are sui generis hybrids of fiction, travelogue, autobiography and historical expos», in which a narrator (both Sebald and not Sebald) comments on the quick blossoming of natural wonders and the long deaths that come of human atrocities. All his narratives are punctuated with images--murky photographs, architectural plans, engravings, paintings, newspaper clippings--inserted into the prose without captions and often without obvious connection to the words that surround them. This important volume includes a rare 1993 interview called "'But the written word is not a true document': A Conversation with W.G. Sebald about Photography and Literature," in which Sebald talks exclusively about his use of photographs. It contains some of Sebald's most illuminating and poetic remarks about the topic yet. In it, he discusses Barthes, the photograph's "appeal," the childhood image of Kafka, family photographs, and even images he never used in his writings. In addition, Searching for Sebald positions Sebald within an art-historical tradition that begins with the Surrealists, continues through Joseph Beuys and blossoms in the recent work of Christian Boltanski and Gerhard Richter, and tracks his continuing inspiration to artists such as Tacita Dean and Helen Mirra. An international roster of artists and scholars unpacks the intricacies of his unique method. Seventeen theoretical essays approach Sebald through the multiple filters of art history (Krauss), film studies (Kluge), cultural theory (Benjamin), psychoanalysis (Freud), and especially photographic history and theory (Barthes, Kracauer), and 17 modern and contemporary art projects are read through a Sebaldian filter. If Sebald's artistic output acts as a touchstone for new critical theory being written on "post-medium" photographic practices, Seaching for Sebald suggests a model for new investigations in the burgeoning field of visual studies.

Searching for Sebald

Photography & Video

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