WAYS OF SEEING

John Berger’s 
“Ways of Seeing”

In photography it's not all about the 'photo' but there's a deeper meaning to all photography and Art in general and one person who discusses theoretical meaning is John Berger. Here is a discussion on a few pages I recently saw from his book.

This chapter is purely images, no text, which at first was slightly strange as I am used to seeing images with text alongside. The text you usually see, normally informs you about the narrative and opinion about that particular image, but here, John Berger has included 14 pages with no information.

After looking at these images for a while I decided to take a look at John Berger’s BBC documentary, “Ways of seeing”, which I thought may give me some ideas and thoughts around this piece.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnfB-pUm3eI

The following images are from the chapter I will discuss.

No text, Just image?

Berger may have done this to give the viewer an opportunity to read the images on their own accord and not be manipulated by a piece of text that decides for you. I thought that including text may change the significance of the image and “manipulating” its’ concept. Berger states that “pictures are like words”, “the images speak for themselves”. During the documentary Berger shows a “reproduction” of an image, to a group of primary school children and asks them to look and explain what they see. 

The result being quite diverse and strangely, the boys thought the person was a man and the girls, a woman. They all had their own opinion on this painting and came up with their own ideas and I think that’s very important when making your own work, whether it’s necessary to include text or your interpretation straight away to avoid the viewer being too restricted.

Why can’t viewing art be more spontaneous?

Narratives? 

The idea of male and female roles in society during the 16-1800’s, power and wealth, culture and social status and the depiction of women.  Most of these images were oil paintings, mainly during the Renaissance, some earlier, some later and it was evident that the portraits within them were of high status and considerably wealthy. Some emphasise the dominance in the male figure with the women as house-wives or maids. 

There were a few images of animals that suggested possession and ownership and most importantly the images of women could be a little provocative or a little exaggerated In terms of the female figure. John Berger argues that in European art from the Renaissance onwards, women were depicted as being “aware of being seen by a male) spectator”. This explains the poses and the styling of the women in the paintings and how they were almost always seen, as nudes.

Similarities and what period in history? 

The similarities of the images are that they were either during the Renaissance or later, maybe earlier. They are of a very classical style, some biblical, some of historic relevance, and they represent the women quite frequently. The nudes of women were generally seen as beauty and a “form of dress”, or a “display”, “disguise”. The oil paintings, specifically the biblical ones were often representing eve as being punished, the women was always seen as the “weak” or “vulnerable” and this could also be the answer to why women were nude and men were dressed, the male was superior over women.

 In Berger’s documentary he suggests that women were normally depicted by a (male) painter for the viewer’s pleasure. The images are quite expressive and the paintings exaggerate certain subjects, “paintings were to be seen, not hidden”, it was the “idealism” of that time. There are emphasises on wealth and culture, “how the other half live”, and these were represented with animals, huge amounts of land, portraits of maids and servants and family portraits in quite extravagant clothing. The slave trade is also represented in a few images and these would probably be shown in a newspaper at the time, documenting an event.

Can the readings of these images change over time? 

The readings of these images would change over time, and we thought that our ideas on history and religion would change from person to person and we can see how exaggerated paintings were of the depictions of the world. Also the images of the slave trade would have been seen at the time in newspapers to document these events and now we see it as a historical document, something that we now learn about. 

Education, advertising, modern art has changed our perceptions of things, and traditional art is now something we admire rather than producing more of that style of work. The images with the wealth and social status is an insight to the way they lived and that has changed a considerable amount, what we think of social class now is completely different, these images are now historical documents and insights to a society that doesn’t exist anymore.