In form and content alike, Paris Arcades was to be Walter Benjamin’s most demanding project for a new method of gaining insight into history: a history in images reflecting the multilayered character of the past. Benjamin’s historical-philosophical approach was directed against the authority of dogmatic systems, taking the marginal, the peculiar, and the fault lines as its orientation. Benjamin outlines the importance of things, images, architectures, and experiences for historical insight using the figure of the ragpicker. The shadowy labyrinths and crowded merchandise backdrops of the Parisian arcades constituted for Benjamin the historically charged districts in which the metropolis was ...