The Photographic Activity of Postmodernism

This essay brought up a lot of great points that refer back to Benjamin Walter’s beliefs of the aura of art. I felt that this essay clarified and distinguished some new concepts that are often confused with one another. Crimp brings up the new concept of prensence, which has a few different meanings. One is the reality of being there and the second was the presence of absence, and third the presence beyond being there. The aura in photographs is “ ins not to be found in the presence of the photographer in the photograph in the way that the aura of a painiting is determined b the presence of the painter’s unmistakable hand in his picture” instead it is the “presence of the subject, of what is photographed.” This statement for me clarifies the difference between the often confused concepts. While one is brought out because of the actual authenticity the painter brings to the art the other , the presence, is brought out through the actual subjects that are being represented thus concludes the reason the concept of presence of beyond being there. The presence of absence I felt was a slightly more confusing, and this concept I’m still very unsure about. Then there was the discussion of representation and how that Photograph if only the original is absent then there is representation, however what caught me really off guard his quote “and representation takes place because it is always already there in the world as representation”. All in all , I thought this essay brought very interesting ideas and clarified some of them and complicated it at the same time.