“But now let us follow the subsequent development of photography. What do we see? It has become more and more subtle, more and more modem, and the result is that it is now incapable of photographing a tenement or a ruhbish-heap without transfiguring it. Not to mention a river dam or an electric cable factory: in front of these, photography can now only say, 'How beautiful...'
What we must demand from the photographer is the ability to put such a caption beneath his picture as will rescue it from the ravages of modishness and confer upon it a revolutionary use value.”
Walter Benjamin, The Author as Producer