@TannerSturza
The picture that I have taken from google maps is of a dirt road in La Trinidad, Mexico. Walter Benjamin raises the question that because photography is a mechanical reproduction is it considered art? Walter Benjamin claims that even the best reproductions of art are lacking “its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be” (page 3). If someone wanted too they could go to google maps and reproduce the exact same picture that I have taken or they could even go to Mexico and take a similar picture. Then he brings up, “whether the very invention of photography had not transformed the entire nature of art” (page 6) and ”The concept of aura which was proposed above with reference to historical objects may usefully be illustrated with reference to the aura of natural ones. We define the aura of the latter as the unique phenomenon of a distance, however close it may be” (page 3). He claims that because a picture can be reproduced that it loses it aura. The fact that it can be reproduced means that it is not unique, but that does not mean that a picture is not art. The nature of my picture presents aura and illustrates details that are often over looked.