J. Berger - Ways of Seeing

This week we were set the task to watch John Berger's Ways of seeing episode 1.

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"Process of seeing.. is less spontaneous and natural than what we tend to believe"

Berger argues this spontaneity is due to habit and convention. Perspective centers everything on the eye of the beholder and this is what we call reality. We were limited as we could only see one thing at any given moment in time. Due to the invention of a camera everything changed. The machine became 'freedom from human immobility' and it was 'free from the boundaries of time an space' (words of Dziga Vertov, director of Man with a Movie Camera). Appearences no longer we viewed by the human eye, but now the iris of a camera'.

"The camera reproduces... making it available in any size, anywhere for any purpose"

Pieces of fine art used to be able to only be seen in one place, the gallery in which it was hanging. Now reproduction allows these images images to be seen unlimited and simultaneously in any location.

Painting once belonged to a particular place, ie churches and chapels. In this context, we see them as being records of the location, part of the individuality of the building. The paintings uniqueness is made of the uniqueness of the place it is shown, and thus it's meaning is created. Icons are the most extreme case of this.

But as we view the reproductions being presented to us on screen we see them in the context of our own lives. 

"Soon after we can see, we are aware that we can also be seen."

Berger explains the role of the viewer in the process of 'seeing', like, in the reading of week 1, he outlines how we see denotative (information) and connotative (interpretation) meanings in images.  

 "Every image embodies a way of seeing. Even a photograph"

Berger uses examples of us seeing him through the television, or even above, a photograph. Berger shows how an image now travels to us, we no longer have to travel to it, and that the meaning of a image no longer resides in its own surface. Meaning is transmitted to us along with the reproduction of an image. It has become information.

"To prove... it is a genuine..."

Original fine art paintings have a new 'impressiveness' and increased market value. Not because of the meaning of its image, but because of it's authenticity. The camera has made them reproducible, so all that is left is the awe of knowing you are looking at the original.

"The camera has multiplied it's possible meanings"

Berger explains that by making the information contained within an image transmittable, the camera has destroyed a famous paintings original intended meaning. But they've lost and gained something. These silent and still paintings can be manipulated by movement. An example is shown where the camera moves into an image, just showing the face of a female subject. Now it's meaning has changed - 'just a pretty girl anywhere'. Paintings as a whole have one meaning, but camera movements can even display a linear narrative when looking at individual sections or even just show a landscape from viewing just one section with no human subject in it at all.

"...paintings are modified and changed by the sounds you here when looking at them."

Speech provides a more noticeable change, whilst music tends to be more subtle. Berger asks us to view a painting of birds flying out of a field. He then tells us this is the last painting Van Gogh painted before he died, followed by a piece of sad, emotional music. We never consciously realise how sounds, music and rhythm change the significance of an image. In fact, two different types of music can completely change what we are seeing, as shown in the Carvaggio painting where upbeat, operatic music plays as we view it followed by a second viewing accompanied by sombre choral music. Berger affirms that now meanings are transmittable, they are likely to be manipulated and transformed in the process.

"When paintings are reproduced they become a form of information... they have to hold their own against the other information... jostling around them."

We are presented with magazine excerpts, showing pictures alongside others and text alongside them also. Berger explains the meaning of an image changes by what is presented alongside it and what is shown after it. Showing an advert of a group of girls dancing, and then a Goya painting depicting an execution has less of an impact then when an actual assassination is shown then the Goya painting. 

Up until now Berger has shown us how reproduction makes the meaning and significance of works of art ambiguous. He argues this is not necessarily a negative thing, as we can see from the way we create collages on our walls that everything becomes part of a visual language. It's accessible.

Berger explains the texts of art experts surrounding the reproductions of fine art around it counter this by making art inaccessible to everyone. These texts, Berger argues, are made in fear of accessibility. He concludes this is mystification.    

He compares this to how children, until education causes them to accept mystifications, interpret images from many sources directly with reference to their own experience. He shows how in conversation with a group of school children that they notice how the gender of a central character in one of Carvaggio's paintings is ambiguous without any prior knowledge that the painter happened to be homosexual, something adults may normally miss.

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Reflection for project: From Berger's analysis, I think it will be highly important to make sure there is a common theme running throughout my photo-essay and to make sure alongside the critical introduction this is emphasised. I have taken this away from the episode as Berger explains how the impact of the images and the overall meaning are changed and by manipulated by individual photographs alongside each other and by the text that is presented with it.