But what is the value of having “exactly the same visual experience” while presumably having a less exact form of some other kind of experience?

That difference would be effaced, would become undocumentable by the object in and of itself — it becomes unavailable even in fantasy to believe that an object alone could manifest its aura.

What is aura, actually? A strange web of space and time: the unique appearance of a distance, no matter how close it may be. While at rest on a summer’s noon, to trace a range of mountains on the horizon, or a branch that throws its shadow on the observer, until the moment or the hour becomes part of their appearance — this is what it means to

I didn’t really think about how outlandish Michel’s proposal was to make “copies that are accurate to within fractions of a millimeter” of fragments of rock until I was at the Met recently, looking at damaged ancient relics, thinking about the meticulous effort that would have to go into replicating such objects’ singular histories of contingency