Judy (and all)
Benjamin appears to have been the kind of guy who was wrong most of the time
with the answers but right with the questions! The only thing that surprises
me about recent essays is that the writers apparently thought people had
thought he was right before. Of course in academe anything is possible.
I don't want to get into discussions about auras and art objects but that
seemed to me to be the territory that was looming into discussion.
I once did a sort of performance of Strand's 1923 or whenever piece on
straight photography with a few anti-pictorial embellishments of my own to
a camera club. It got few laughs.
Changing to another topic completely I thought the recipe for the lemon tart
one of the best things about the Albumen book. Almost worth using albumen
for.
Peter
Fixing Shadows and elsewhere:
http://faraday.clas.virginia.edu/cgi-uva/cgiwrap/~ds8s/Niepce/peter-m.cgi