Crimp response

Interesting ideas but nothing really new- one problem I notice is that the article was published in 1980- well before the advent of photoshop and the cheap digital camera- how does the essay stand up next to these devices? I think perhaps that it is true (photography now exudes its own peculiar aura of authenticity but one which is divorced from originality- authentic and original are not mutually exclusive anymore or maybe they never were) but then if we extend his arguement into the Now of modern technology the aura must transfer from the author, even further than Sherman or Levine has already transferred it, into the idea- what Danto spoke of as the supremacy of philosophy in art today- it is no longer the medium- whether that be photographs or paintings- it is the intentionality of philosophy which creates the aura and this aura coupled with the most cursory gesture by the source of the philosophy/aura, creates the Art. Photography can therefore sit alongside painting at the back of the cultural bus now, where it relegated painting at the beginning of the 20th century- but whats left? who is driving the bus? Is it an individual ethos or a cultural one? or is it the internet, a hive mind of man?