Walter Benjamin, Piccola storia della fotografia, 2015

Benjamin wrote the “Piccola story della fotografia” on commission at the end of the summer of 1931, driven by the need for money, but starting a project that was intended to lead to more extensive and in-depth results. In fact, photography had become an important interest on his path, crossed on several occasions during the never finished work of collecting materials for the “Passagen-Werk” and at the center of the reflection on the technical reproducibility that will give his results in the “Opera d art in the era of its technical reproducibility “, four years later. The text is published in the “Literarische Welt” in three installments, accompanied by eight images chosen by the author. To write it, Benjamin immerses himself in an intensive reading of reference texts, from which he takes the main information and data and on which he bases his original reflections. Haste and anxiety make their effects felt on the text, which contains some imprecision and seems fragmented in the path and division of the three blocks. But the inaccuracies and the logical leaps themselves are actually indicative of the actual interests of the author, philosopher and non-historian, especially here where the photographic image is also a problem for the linear concept of history. The philosopher had an urgent need to introduce themes that historians had not found formulated.