Analysis Of Ways Of Seeing By John Berger

In “Ways of Seeing”, John Berger says how the camera can change they way people see the world. “The invention of the camera changed the way that man saw “(Berger 149). Berger believed that the camera took away perspective of the way people see objects. The viewer sees through the photographer's eyes. “My way leads to the creation of fresh perspective of the world”(Berger 149). A picture may not be exactly what is seems. It may show what actually happened, or it could show parts of what actually happened. A classic example of this is war photos in World War I. During World War I, no one saw any pictures of soldiers dying on the front lines. They only saw the pictures of them looking brave and happy. The camera caused Americans to misinterpret …show more content…
Unfortunately, the government used the camera to show the American people, only what they wanted them to know.“What you saw depended on where you were and when” (Berger 149).The government only showed people the non-violent parts of the war. If Americans were somewhere else in the world, they may have had a different view on the war. The American government used the pictures of the war as propaganda. They would only show happy pictures of the soldiers. The American people would only see them smiling. There was no picture, shown to the public, that showed soldiers on the front lines. Also, no pictures were shown of all the soldiers who were injured or killed. The government needed the public to support the war.They needed people to sign up to join the fight. The government wanted people to do their part in order to win the war. If the American people saw what was actually happening on the front lines, they wouldn't be as willing to join the fight.The government knew that they couldn’t show the American people the whole truth, and still get the support that they needed. This gave Americans a false view of the war, which influenced their way of seeing.The camera was used in World War I as a propaganda tool. It didn’t show the truth to the American people. Instead, the government told the American people the way to view the …show more content…
The main purpose of the camera was to get the public to do what the government wanted. Without the support of the public, America would not have got far in the war. Some might say that lying through these pictures was a necessary evil. They had to lie to the people of America to insure that they had their support to win the war. They may have taken away the public's way of seeing, by misleading them, but the government thought that this was important to the war effort. The government did not give the American people the whole truth, each influenced the way they saw the