CHARLES BAUDELAIRE AND WALTER BENJAMIN ON PHOTOGRAPHY (ASPECTS OF AESTHETICS AND POLITICS)
The article is focused on the problem of photography on basis of photo-aesthetical reflections of French poet and art critic Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) and German philosopher Walter Benjamin (1892-1940). Throughout their life, both were fascinated by photography, a medium which for them encapsulate both the attractions and the pitfalls of Modernity. Baudelaire’s and Benjamin’s personal engagement with the medium is reflected in his writings, which explore photography from a variety of different perspectives. The most important of them are the aesthetical and the political one. While for Baudelaire the photography compared to painting or poetry is an inferior medium, Benjamin rated it very high, as a matrix of contemporary art par excellence.