The camera, the flâneur, and history: dialogues on photography between Walter Benjamin, Gisèle Freund and Germaine Krull

Abstract

This study addresses the relationship between photography and socio-philosophical thinking. The motto for reflection is the dialogues between the productions of Walter Benjamin, Gisèle Freund and Germaine Krull. Benjamin’s philosophy, the sociological studies of Gisèle Freund and the photographs of Germaine Krull, are an important chapter in the History of the development of photography, just as they representative of a set reading that emerge from the intersection of the debate about technique, art and modernity. In the context of the rise of authoritarian regimes in Europe, Benjamin, Freund and Krull find in the situation of exile in Paris a meeting point for the development of their intellectual works. In Parisian exile, the works of these three modern thinkers intertwine in a relevant dialogue about the developments of the advancement of photographic technique and their role in apprehending the transformations of the urban world.