The line that really stuck with me from Benjamin’s reading was: “That which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art.” I’ll be honest that when I first saw the word “aura,” I didn’t immediately think of art history. I thought of people. To me, aura is something spiritual and powerful. It’s when someone radiates a specific energy perhaps like a color, a glow, or a presence that goes beyond logic. There are people (and even fictional characters) whose aura makes them unforgettable, sometimes magnetic because of their high charisma or, sometimes terrifying.

Reading Benjamin’s take helped me realize that this same idea applies to art. Aura is what gives a painting or sculpture its sacredness. It’s that feeling when you stand in front of an original piece and you just feel… something. Something bigger than you. But when that piece is printed on a million posters or turned into a meme, that aura fades. It becomes normal and disposable unlike witnessing it in front of your eyes.

This really made me think about how I interact with art and media now. I see beautiful things online all the time, but they rarely “touch” me. Maybe it’s because I didn’t “arrive” at them; they were just handed to me by an algorithm. Nothing feels earned, and that changes the experience.

The author of this reading Benjamin made me ask myself about how seeing something over and over makes it more accessible, or less meaningful? It made me think about how aura may be about rarity which is something that this world may be lacking due to our technological progression making rarity hard to find. Especially now, with the rise of AI-generated art, it feels like anything can be produced instantly. But if anything can be made by anyone, at any time, does anything still feel special? The more we copy and mass-produce images, the more I wonder if we’re drifting even further from the kind of aura Benjamin was trying to preserve.