@chrisdtc101
The image I found on google maps was of a group of people both walking and riding camels in the Saharan desert in Algeria. In his article The Work Of Art In The Age Of Mechanical Reproduction Walter Benjamin says that, “Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be. This unique existence of the work of art determined the history to which it was subject throughout the time of its existence” (3). Since this image is a copy of the original event, we have no context as to what is happening here: Where are they going? What is their purpose? What are they carrying?
Another element from Walter Benjamin’s writing that correlates to this image is “Aura”. Aura is, “the unique phenomenon of a distance, however close it may be” (4). In this image, we see the people and camels with some masses of rock some distance away, but we can’t really tell how far away they are. In the image they appear fairly close to the people and camels, but cameras can often distort distances, especially since the land is completely flat other between the people and the rocks. It is likely that the rocks are actually very far away, and the people will have to walk for quite awhile before actually reaching them. Unfortunately, we cannot discover how far of a distance it is without traveling to the location of the image itself.