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introduction of mechanical means of reproduction of art, particularly photography and film, caused the very foundations of this setup to be radically altered. For the first time it was possible for anyone to acquire the means to take photographs of a work of art, or at purchase an image of the work. However hard cultural elites in the late 19th century had tried to protect the aura of art works,

'the social advance of the masses and the invention of media such as film, which depends upon distribution to the masses, had led to the inevitable 'decay of the aura' in the 20th century'. Benjamin marks the distinction between manual and machine reproduction of art,

'The whole sphere of authenticity is outside technical, and, of course, not only technical - reproducibility,' he states, 'Confronted with its manual reproduction, which was usually branded as a forgery, the original preserved all its authority; not so vis a vis technical reproduction'

Benjamin states two reasons this occurs. Firstly, machine reproduction is more independent of the original than manual reproduction; secondly, 'technical reproduction can put the copy of the original into situations which would be out of reach for the original itself'. So mass-produced copies are able to engage with the wider world in a manner not possible for the original or one-off copies. Benjamin summarises his ideas concerning reproduction by asserting the technique 'detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. Many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence.” So to allow the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own particular situation, is to reactivate the object reproduced,

“It is these processes that lead to the 'tremendous shattering of tradition which is the obverse of the contemporary crisis and renewal of mankind'

In Benjamin's conception, then, state and religious authorities have steadily lost the ability to control general access to such works of art, particularly since the 20th century began. This is most apparent in relation to the cinema, which destroyed the traces of aura with which art had been traditionally imbued; Benjamin cites art's historical value as a fundamental part of magical and religious rituals. In the process, capitalism strips art of its the idealistic, theological 'halo'- to some extent a happy consequence and restorative, as it returns the art object to its non-utilitarian presence, its everyday reality.

For Benjamin, an artwork's “aura” refers to its uniqueness and the 'phenomena of distance, however close [an object] may be'. He uses gives the example of distant mountains and a tree's bough over head, - both contain 'aura' because they are images have not been effectively reproduced mechanically .

Beyond the concepts of aura and authenticity, Benjamin's concepts of reproduction and reversibility represent the core of his concerns about way in which art's role in society has been fundamentally altered in the 20th century. Benjamin proposes that the artwork's aura of authenticity has withered away because of its reproduceability, and the process of reproduction brings art into closer proximity with a mass audience. However, paradoxically, as the authenticity erodes, the work's essence becomes forefronted in the process, as it starts to become designed for reproducibility. As Benjamin describes it,

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