
Walter Benjamin’s “Short History of Photography ”
WALTER BENJAMIN’S ESSAY “KLEINE GESCHICHTE der Photographie,” was published in the September 18 and 25 and October 2, 1931, issues of the periodical Literarische Welt. It precedes by almost five years his better-known essay translated as “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” This study—translated here for the first time in the United States—is an extraordinary document in the history of photographic criticism, a remarkably prescient description of the limits and potentials of the medium.
Walter Benjamin is best known for his Marxist-based literary criticism. He was among the