"Nadar's superiority to his colleagues is shown by his attempt to take photographs in the Paris sewer system: for the first time, the lens was deemed capable of making discoveries." The presentation of photography as a technology, a triumph of science, the capture of life/light. "Wiertz can be characterized as the first to demand, if not actually forsee, the use of photographic montage for political agitation." | |||||||||||||||||||||||
"Baudelaire's genius, which is nourished on melancholy, is an allegorical genius... Paris becomes the subject of lyric poetry." "The chthonic elements of the city- its topographic formations, the old abandoned bed of the Seine- have evidently found in him a mold." "The worker produces capital; capital produces him- hence, he produces himself. The worker exists as a worker only when he exists for himself as capital; and he exists as capital only when some capital exists for him. The existence of capital is his existence..." Marx (from convolute X) | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Benjamin tries to get closer to his own era by examining and developing a intimate relationship with the eras preceeding it. |
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