The Mass Ornament

In his collection of essays, Siegfried Kracauer discusses mass culture and the interrelationships of photography with memory, time and space.

The collection of essays and articles by Siegfried Kracauer, who is – similar to Walter Bejamin, – among the greatest world culture theorists, includes his texts written in 1920-1930s. In the largest among them, Photography, Kracauer studies how photography relates to memory, time and space, and talks about its credibility and practical aspects. In the essay The Mass Ornament (which gave its title to the book), written in 1927, the author explores a wide range of topics related to the life of masses and argues that the goods which come as a result of capitalistic form of production, are produced “not for their possession, but for the profit that tends towards eternity.”