Architecture under the gaze of photography: Benjamin’s actuality and consequences

Prologue Norbert Bolz, the media theorist and philosopher, in “Media aesthetics: What is the cost

of keeping Benjamin current?” argues that the cost of keeping Benjamin “current,” actual,

is to ground him in the theory of modern media.1 Admittedly, Benjamin effectively inau-

gurated an epistemic break in the condition of the human perception in modernity in the

early years of twentieth century. Based on this fact, Andreas Michel, who follows Bolz’s

theory, has attempted to secure Benjamin’s theory of perception in the “media theory.”