Kracauer, Siegfried (1889-1966), German cultural critic who emigrated to the USA in 1933 and pioneered the genre of sociological film criticism. Kracauer was Theodor Adorno's teacher and Walter Benjamin's close associate, and so had links with the Frankfurt School. His early work writing feuilletons for the Frankfurter Zeitung allowed him to cover a wide range of topics while indulging his interest in sociology and philosophy. In these essays Kracauer celebrated everyday human experience, finding in the exploration of apparently superficial spheres of existence a means to transcend the emptiness of modern living. Modernity in his view is characterized by a spiritual deficit, a separation from the absolute. Photography can transcend this lack by recording and revealing physical reality, while at the same time underscoring its superficiality; thus the photograph reveals the modern world as a metaphysical void. The study of filmic realism for which Kracauer is known was a consideration of how the surface can reveal a loss of meaning, and from this understanding lead to a ‘revelation of the negative’.

— Molly Rogers

Bibliography

• Kracauer, S., The Mass Ornament (1995)

The Oxford Companion to the Photograph. Copyright © 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.