post-it note, Benjamin

The notion of aura is the most memorable to be from Banjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”. To me the word “aura” means a feeling or idea sparked by something else, a symbol to remember something else by. The dictionary says it is “a distinctive atmosphere or quality that seems to surround and be generated by a person, thing or place” (I promise that I looked up the word after I described it myself!). Songs usually have positive or negative auras about them depending on the place that a person first heard it in. If that place holds loving and exciting memories, that song becomes a medium that evokes loving and exciting memories when it is played. But these memories are not the same as the genuine memories that were felt as a result of something else when the song was heard the first time. When art is reproduced, it is recreated, but not by the same hands as the original. If we used Michelangelo as an example, if someone were to paint another ceiling, it would not be with the knowledgeable hands of an artist made famous by painting an amazing ceiling; they would become the person who did what Michelangelo did. All of the time that has passed over the paint laid by Michelangelo’s brush set gives the Sistine Chapel a ceiling that exists in the past among modern time and people. This aura allows the Sistine Chapel to be considered a special place in history that we are able to visit today. The aura of photographs are the reason that I hang them in places that I can see often everyday. They evoke feelings that I had when the pictures were taken. While the picture can be reprinted, the feelings are as close to the real ones that can be “seen” in the pictures, even though people who view the picture could never feel the same way about the image or the people in it or its backdrop as I. Aura is a very dangerous thing, as time passes, the feelings evoked by certain things in the present cause us to reminisce in the past as if time has not boundary.