John Berger - Ways of Seeing

Essay One

The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe.

We only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice. As a result of this act, what we see is brought within our reach - though not necessarily within arm's reach. We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves.

Soon after we can see, we are aware that we can also be seen. The eye of the other combines with our own eye to make it fully credible that we are part of the visible world. The reciprocal nature of vision is more fundamental that that of spoken dialogue.

An image is a sight which has been recreated or reproduced. It's an appearance, or a set of appearances, which has been detached from the place and time in which it first made its appearance and preserved. Every image embodies a way of seeing. The photographers way of seeing is reflected in his choice of subject. Yet, although every image embodies a way of seeing, our perception or appreciation of an image depends also upon our own way of seeing.

Through an increased awareness of history and consciousness of individuality the vision of the image maker became part of the record. An image became a record of how X had seen Y. Not to deny the imaginative quality of art: the more imaginative the work, the more profoundly it allows us to share the artist's experience of the visible.

When an image is presented as a work of art, the way people look at it is affected by a whole series of learnt assumptions about art. Assumptions concerning: Beauty, Truth, Genius, Civilization, Form, Status, Taste etc -> these assumptions are no longer accord with the world as it is (the world including consciousness). A mystification of the past happens to justify the role of the ruling classes. -> Explanation with the help of paintings by Frans Hals. He as a very poor man portrays the regents. They say "if we can see the present clearly enough, we shall ask the right questions of the past."

"I'm an eye. A mechanical eye. I, the machine, show you a wold the way only I can see it. I free myself for today and forever from human immobility. I'm in constant movement. I approach and pull away from objects. I creep under them. I move alongside a running horse's mouth. I fall and rise with falling and rising bodies. This is I, the machine, manoeuvring in the chaotic movements, recording one movement after another in the most complex combinations. Freed from the boundaries of time and space, I co-ordinate any and all point of the universe, wherever I want them to be. My way leads towards the creation of a fresh perception of the world. Thus I explain in a new way the world unknown to you." (Quotations from an article written by Dziga Vertov in 1923, revolutionary Soviet film director).

The camera showed that the notions of time passing was inseparable from the experience of the visual (except in paintings). What you saw was relative to your position in time and space. Before perspective organized the visual field: every drawing / painting that used perspective proposed to the spectator that he was the unique centre of the world - the (movie)camera demonstrated that there was no centre. The invention of the camera changed the way men saw. Before the camera a painting could never been seen at more than one place at the same time. When the camera reproduces a painting, it destroys the uniqueness of its image. As a result its meaning changes - it multiplies and fragments into many meanings. "This is vividly illustrated by what happens when a painting is shown on a TV screen. The painting enters each viewers house. there it is surrounded by his wallpaper, his furniture, his mementoes. It enters the atmosphere of his family. It becomes their talking point. It lends its meaning to their meaning. At the same time it enders a million other houses and in each of them is seen in a different context. Because of the camera , the painting now travels to the spectator rather than the spectator to the painting. It its travels, its meaning is diversified.