Quoting Benjamin

"History breaks down into images, not into stories".

Walter Benjamin


"There are probably as many Benjamins as there are readers and one could say that is a triviality, but certainly I can't think of a thinker with that kind of malleable quality of Benjamin. I can't think of anyone else who approximates that.  The way that Benjamin is used most in this country, is to dip in and take a quotation out of context in support of any argument one can think of, and I used to take umbrage at this, until of course I realised that this is precisely Benjamin's own practice: to dip in and take a quotation out of context and mount it into a dialectical image and see what sparks fly".

Michael Jennings (author of 'Dialectical Images')



'One Way Street: Fragments for Walter Benjamin' - directed by John Hughes, 1993
(Ubuweb video - 58 mins)


Ubuweb is a great online resource for a wide range of films and documentaries about modern artists and thinkers.