W.Benjamin: The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Benjamin claims that art has lost its creativity, genius, external value, mystery and aura.
Founding, stamping and lithography made artworks reproducible; such works have lost their aura (‘unique phenomenon of a distance’) and their presence in time and space, because mechanical reproduction is more independent of the original than manual reproduction, moreover, the presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity. Seeing a forgery of ‘Mona Lisa’ feels closer to seeing the real one than having it as wallpaper on a mobile phone. However photographs of people we hold dear still maintain their aura, our feeling towards them make it happen, no matter how many copies are there. …