In 1931 Benjamin is still interested in the history of photography, which is to say in photography as a medium with its own traditions and its own fate. He believes the genius of the medium to be the rendering of the human subject woven into the network of its social relations.

One might subsume the eliminated element in the term “aura” and go on to say: that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art. This is a symptomatic process whose significance points beyond the realm of art. One might generalize by saying: the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence. The uniqueness of a work of art is inseparable from its being imbedded in the fabric of tradition.

This photograph of pianist Rudolph Ganz arrived in the mail last month. It belonged to my grandfather, then my parents, and now me. It has become an object of contemplation for me and I find myself re-reading Walter Benjamin's Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction with this photograph in mind. The photograph, the physical object, holds some value as an antique, it has been passed around my family for nearly one hundred years. As a photographer, old photographs hold a special place for me as a reminder that with care our work will outlive us. The photograph's backing is embossed with the mark from Matzene Studios founded by the colorful photographer Richard Gordon Matzene whose brilliant photographic success was only matched by his breathtaking business failures. Matzene is primarily remembered today for his early portraits of Nepalese royalty; he was the 27th foreigner to enter the country. (see Royal Nepal Through the Lens of Richard Gordon Matzene) By the time this image was taken Matzene had already relocated to New York, gone bankrupt, changed his name, and moved to Los Angeles. He left the Chicago branch, where this image was made, in the hands of his brother-in-law, George Baumer, who turned it into the studio for musical portraits in Chicago during the early 1900s.

But there's more. Rudolph Ganz was the head of the piano department at the Chicago Musical College. I studied music in Chicago where my piano teacher's teacher was a student of Ganz, making him something of a great-grand teacher to me. Ganz was himself a student of the legendary Ferruccio Busoni. Through this photograph I can connect my own humble musical ambitions to a vast and storied musical tradition, giving the photograph a personal value exceeding that of an antique. It is also warmly inscribed to the contralto Christine Miller. Though somewhat forgotten today, she was well-known in her day with a huge career immortalized on some of the first Edison recordings. She was my aunt, a portrait of her sits on my piano.