Victor Burgin

‘In the mid-1930s, Walter Benjamin posed the question of the relation of art to the dominant representational technology of his time: photography and film. To return to the artwork essay today in the spirit in which it was written is to ask the same question in respect of the hegemonic representational technology of our own time: the digital. Benjamin found that the medium of photography and film had dissolved the auratic quality of art. Digital technology has dissolved the very category show more of ‘medium’ itself.’

Walter Benjamin’s essay of cultural criticism ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ has become a ‘classic’ text, one which resonated through the twentieth century and beyond. In this succinct and pointed new essay, the artist and writer Victor Burgin rereads Benjamin’s 1935 text, to elaborate a new argument contending that the camera today is profoundly imbricated in that which is not visible. show less

In this beautifully illustrated book, Victor Burgin pursues ideas of "desire in and for a city, and, in a sense, desire of a city," ideas first explored in his video Venise, which was made in 1993 for the city of Marseilles and reflects on the relationship between San Francisco and Marseilles. The book is the only publication to comprehensively document this work, and it is the first book of this kind by Victor Burgin.

Surreal photographs accompany selections from the author's interviews, talks, and letters about art, criticism, and communication

'The two articles ... first appeared in "Studio international" ... in July/August 1975 ... [and] in March/April 1976' -