From Ways Of Seeing · · 3m
Seeing Before Words
John Berger explains how vision precedes language and how images reshape our understanding of history.
In brief
John Berger explains how vision precedes language and how images reshape our understanding of history. Images reveal how we see the world, but their meaning shifts when reproduced, becoming tools for political power. Originally reported by Ways Of Seeing.
Seeing Before Words
Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.
The Gap Between Sight and Words
Each evening we see the sun set. We know the earth turns away from it. Yet the knowledge never quite fits the sight.
Seeing Shapes Knowledge
In the Middle Ages, fire meant something different than today because of beliefs about Hell.
The Reciprocal Nature of Vision
We see the world through the eye of another, creating a mutual relationship between viewers.
Images Are Man-Made
All images are sights recreated or reproduced, detached from their original time and place.
Photographs Reflect the Viewer
Every photograph shows the photographer's way of seeing, not just a mechanical record of reality.
Images Show the Past
Images were first made to conjure up absent things and later became records of how people saw the past.
The Past is Mystified
The past is never there to be discovered; it's a well of conclusions for action, not a living history.
Frans Hals' Alms House Portraits
Frans Hals painted Governors and Regentesses of an Alms House for old paupers in Haarlem.
Hals' Poverty
Hals, over eighty and destitute, obtained public charity to survive the winter of 1664.
The Regentesses' Composition
Each woman speaks to us of the human condition with equal importance against the dark background.
The Seduction of Images
Images work on us because we accept how the artist saw their subjects, matching our own observations.
The Regent's Expression
Critics claimed the Regent was drunk, but Hals likely showed facial paralysis, not intoxication.
The Power of Perspective
Perspective centered the visible world on the viewer's eye, making them the unique center of reality.
The Camera Changes Vision
The camera destroyed the idea that images were timeless, showing time as relative to position in space.
Paintings Become Reproducible
Reproductions of paintings multiply their meaning, allowing images to be used in different contexts.
The Market Value of Art
Original artworks are now valued by market price, creating a bogus religiosity around their spiritual worth.
The National Gallery's Virgin of Rocks
The National Gallery sells reproductions of Leonardo's Virgin of Rocks for two and a half million pounds.
Art as Political Issue
The art of the past has become a political issue because it shapes who understands history.
The big picture
Images reveal how we see the world, but their meaning shifts when reproduced, becoming tools for political power.
