PodcastĬheck out my photography podcast – conversations with inspiring photographers from around the globe sharing their secrets for creating amazing images. If you are interested to read the whole essay “Uses Of Photography”, you can do that on the homepage of the University of Northern Iowa (UNI).įor further reading on the nature of photography and ways of seeing you might want to check out the following article on this site: “Shooting Through A Pinhole”, “Train Your Gaze With Henri Cartier-Bresson” and “A Good Excuse To See The World”. In other words it is necessary to develop the ability to “look at images intelligently”. But what’s important is to know about this mechanism when looking and interpreting an image. A photograph will always be subject to the associations of each observer and his ways of seeing – therefore there’ll always be many different versions as to its interpretation.
Images taken out of context often confuse rather than they help to shed light on an issue. When replacing the memory that puts things in perspective and gives them a value subject to critical judgment, images make us believe that we live in a world where everything is a spectacle. Every image has its own meaning but the way one chooses to perceive the image relies on their own way of seeing. “Ways of Seeing” or how we perceive and process visual images He argues that an industrialized society needs images to keep running and sustain itself. To sustain an economic system, for example, as John Berger says in his short essay. It’s precisely this mechanism that makes photography a powerful instrument of manipulation. Whether it matches or not what the photographer had in mind when he took the image. It’s these factors that ultimately give meaning to an image. Thus the interpretation of each image is subject to the personal experiences, beliefs and opinions of each observer. But soon after that the connection no longer exists. For a brief moment, a split of a second, there is harmony between the physical subject and the image, or if you want the material on which its representation is formed (film, paper, sensor). They are nothing more than a record of an event that has occurred at a certain time in a certain place.īy the light that has left its footprint on the photosensitive material, we know something’s “been there” in front of the camera when the shutter button was presses. In contrast to memory, according to the author, photographic images do not retain significance in themselves. The most striking aspect of text “The Uses Of Photography” for me is when John Berger talks about photographs replacing memory. In his essay “Uses Of Photography”, John Berger – author of Ways Of Seeing – replies to Susan Sontag. It’s an excellent analysis of the far-reaching changes photographic images have made in our way of looking at the world and at ourselves. Almost every photography student has probably read it. Susan Sontag’s book “On Photography” is a classic. The book had a big impact on me at the time, as it did the art establishment of the early seventies. But are the reproductions still as breathtaking as the originals? Simply watching pain.John Berger responding to Susan Sontag’s book “On Photography” L ast year when I heard of John Berger’s death, I was reminded of this little book I read when I was at university. Now instead of looking at original paintings, people just view reproductions and are satisfied that they have seen just the reproductions.
What Berger is implying is that the camera has distorted art. Penguin Classics 176 Pages Based on the BBC television series, John Berger’s Ways of Seeing is a unique look at the way we view art, published as part of the Penguin on Design series in Penguin. The art comes to you, instead of you going to the art. Now you can view art in the luxury of your own home and you can sit in your living room and watch art on television. The true beauty of the images is destroyed and people get a different view of the image when it is taken through the lens of a camera. He states that when a camera reproduces a painting it destroys the idea that images are timeless (Berger 18). With the invention of the camera, reproductions of art are made freely and paintings “can be seen in a million different places at the same time”. It offered multiple angles and perspectives depending on the camera and the lens. The way our outlook on paintings and art changes depending on many things one of them being where and how we look and see a reproduction of a specific painting. More specifically, in the first episode, it focuses on paintings and how different one can interpret the specific painting based on many circumstances. It focuses on how we view and interpret art.
Ways of Seeing by John Berger was originally a television series on BBC that later was made into a book of the same name.