John Berger

destroy the authority of art and to remove it.” (Berger, 126) This quote from, ‘Ways of Seeing’ indicates a portion of John Berger’s bitterness towards the reproduction of art. Throughout his essay he states that reproduction has belittled the original, and has made images of art valueless. On the contrary, I believe that the reproduction of art has generated countless benefits for the art community, such as knowledge, popularity, and value. In John Berger’s essay, he brings up many cases where…

In John Berger’s essay, “The Suit and the Photograph,” Berger did a superior job at describing the difference between each photograph and their meanings behind them. He used a type of approach that I wasn’t familiar with at first, but it then became clear and was successful at doing so. Berger begins by talking about the photographer August Sander, who is responsible for taking the three photos that were discussed in the essay. He mentions that although there are obvious differences between the…

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…

In John Berger’s article, “Ways of Seeing,” he discusses how a painting can be a misleading tool for the brain because many do not understand the meaning behind the painting. The paintings mess around with our brains in the form of telling us lies. In the movie, The Matrix, written by Larry and Andy Wachowski, Neo, the main character, is awaken from his long eternity sleep and realizes he has been living a lie. Throughout the film you are able to see the form of mystification form the Oracle, a…

and what we hear. Language and images like paintings, drawings and photographs are usually a way to express what someone is thinking, the way we see things is structured by what we know and what we believe. In the essay “Drawn To That Moment” by John Berger, he examine the nature of direct perception experience, and the construction of a representation through time. To fully explained this idea in his essay, he discusses his experience of drawing his father’s body and that the dead body of his…

avant-garde art is boring and that it has lost the greatly rich skill that was once required. This is an opinion and view that Berger passionately agrees with and supports. However, Berger approaches this with a different mindset. Berger is neutral and seemingly more open-minded. Berger’s main focus is on the art that we see and interact with hundreds of times a day: advertisements. Berger also discusses how traditionally paintings were a way for a person to display their wealth and all they had…

Objectification is a term often used to describe how women are seen not as beings but as things. As John Berger describes in “Ways of Being,” women have historically been objectified by men. Much literature and academic essays have been written about the objectification of women; however, we can also see gendered politics in new media and art, as in Laurie Simmons’ new exhibition at the Jewish Museum, “How We See.” The exhibit explores how women are identified internally and externally, and how…

Ways of Seeing by John Berger talks about the way we see things and how it is affected by our knowledge and beliefs. The author talks about how we see art differently today than in the past. He mentions that it is due to the technology advancement. In the traditional method paintings are stationary where it can be placed on at one location where as using a camera a picture can be captured in any size or color and more importantly it can be viewed anywhere. For example, unlike in the past where a…

In the essay titled “Ways of Seeing,” by John Berger, it is apparent that the author speaks to a higher class of academics that there is a subjective way people of today’s culture view things, including art. He contends that the socially accepted normality’s skew the perspective of the current generation and it is believed that there should be multiple ways of thinking instead of one. Though subtle at first glance, Mr. Berger uses the three key rhetorical strategies; logos, ethos, and pathos to…

John Berger in his nonfictional work, “Ways of Seeing” (1972), argues that the perception of historically significant art, moreover perception generally, is fundamentally altered by and bounded within the subject of perception’s accoutrements and that perception can be and moreover is controlled, modified and gerrymandered by the powers that be, to alter or suppress perception in their interests. The Matrix (1999) tells the story of Thomas Anderson, a miscreant cyber-criminal under alias ‘Neo’…