Quotes
The man who loses his capacity for experiencing feels as though he is dropped from the calendar.
The techniques based on the use of the camera and of subsequent analogous mechanical devices extend the range of the mémoire volontaire; by means of these devices they make it possible for an event at any time to be permanently recorded in terms of sound and sight. Thus they represent important achievements of a society in which practice is in decline.
To Baudelaire there was something profoundly unnerving and terrifying about daguerreotypy; he speaks of the fascination it exerted as “startling and cruel.” Thus he must have sensed, though he certainly did not see through them, the connections of which we have spoken. His willingness always to grant the modern its place and, especially in art, to assign it its specific function also determined his attitude toward photography. Whenever he felt it as a threat, he tried to put it down to its “mistaken developments”; yet he admitted that these were promoted by “the stupidity of the broad masses.” “These masses demanded an ideal that would conform to their aspirations and the nature of their temperament. . . . Their prayers were granted by a vengeful god, and Daguerre became his prophet.”
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