Walter Benjamin and Douglas Crimp

Theory and Critique of the Photographic Modernity

Abstract

This article aims to reconstruct the principal aspects of Walter Benjamin’s essay “Little History of Photography” and of Douglas Crimp’s theory of the photographic. To do so, I will analyze the context of Benjamin’s early North American reception in the 1970s. Furthermore, I will argue that both the Critical Theory as well as the debates on photography and modern and contemporary artistic thought can benefit from an interconnected reading of Benjamin and Crimp.