Walter Benjamin could have identified the problem with AI nearly a century ago. In 1931, before the technology could even be imagined, the German and Jewish philosopher and media theorist was already thinking about another new medium: photography.
With unsettling foresight, Benjamin wrote that he feared photography could “endow any soup can with cosmic significance but cannot grasp a single one of the human connections in which it exists.” He argued that images which beautify objects while stripping away their meaning are dangerous.
Photography, he observed, can bathe the chimneys of a steel factory in the same soft light as the trees of a forest, yet unlike the paintbrush, the camera produces a powerful impression of reality. It can turn everything into something beautiful, and people — himself included — will readily consume it.
We are often eager to embrace pretty images, even when their subjects are anything but. Even now, viewers can marvel at the dreadful grandeur of factory smokestacks while overlooking the Nazi weapons forge reflected in them.
Benjamin’s essay on the subject, “A Little History of Photography” (1931), is the basis for a small but delectable presentation at the Jewish Museum, timed to coincide with its major Paul Klee exhibition.
