The Shift of Art to Exhibition Value According to Walter Benjamin

In Walter Benjamin’s exerpt of his essay "In the Age of Mechanical Production" he discusses how art’s authenticity and aura, or cult value, has degraded and become less used because of arts technological development and mass reproducibility. With this development,  a new mode of communication through technological developments is used in art. This is exhibition value, and has become the core relationship of how photography and film have impacted the with the way viewers receive the image or film. Benjamin argues that we have shifted from an emphasis of ‘cult value’ to this ‘exposition value.’ He states, “photographs become standard evidence for historical occurrences, and acquire a hidden political significance” (47). In other words, society has transitioned art from remembering loved one’s faces in early photography portraits, to an incorporation of photography and film as political and visual evidence for the masses.The photograph I choose was of a black and white 1950’s drive in theatre.  The eye is drawn to the two actors on the screen waving and smiling. We do not know the plot or even the movie title; there is no caption. Below the movie screen 1950’s cars are parked and the eye moves to a convertible with two people’s heads staring up at the screen. As an observer of today, we see how this photograph captures a time period and serves as visual evidence of the past, but not apart of the time and space, the photographer, or even film. This therefore demonstrates Benjamin’s idea of how film and photography both use exposition value to entertain the masses, and simultaneously as evidence of how aura and authenticity is decaying where as exhibition value is the new wave of art.

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