| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
|
There is a newer edition of this item:
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
"Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.
"But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but word can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled."
John Berger's Ways of Seeing is one of the most stimulating and the most influential books on art in any language. First published in 1972, it was based on the BBC television series about which the (London) Sunday Times critic commented: "This is an eye-opener in more ways than one: by concentrating on how we look at paintings . . . he will almost certainly change the way you look at pictures." By now he has.
About the Author
Galaxies, stars, planets and now spaceships rush about the universe, and we have a sense of time passing because the positions of objects change. Read the first page
Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
The book itself is comprised of six independent, and yet linked, essays. The first textual essay opens with the words 'Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak'. This essay sets the scene for all of the following essays. It identifies that we live in a world of visual imagery. Three of the essays are collections of images. Many of these have been stripped of their titles or any explanation as to who or what they represent therefore allowing the spectator to interpret them themselves. Essay number 3 looks at the nude but more importantly how the social presence of a woman is different from that of a man. Essay number 5 looks at art though mainly explores the differences between looking at or seeing a painting and the desire to possess it. It draws on the work of the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss to illustrate this point. It then slowly teaches the reader how to deconstruct an image and goes into great depth to explain how every small detail is an integral part of the final overall reading. The final essay is about publicity. Which is as relevant now as it has ever been. Even in this technologically changing world publicity still uses the past to sell the future.
The essays do not need to be read in any particular order, which makes it a very useful dip-in book and its size makes it easy to carry it around either in a bag or perhaps a large pocket. It is well written and is therefore a delight to read.
As strange as this may seem, a quote published in the book from an article written by Dziga Vertov, a soviet film director, makes a timely eulogy for the book itself.
'My way leads towards the creation of a fresh perception of the world. Thus I explain in a new way the world unknown to you'.
Although Vertov was talking about a film camera this quote could so easily describe the intention of the book itself. So the answer to why this book continues to be held in such high esteem is simple. As long as we have eyes to see, visual imagery will remain an important signifier of our culture.
In order to understand our culture we need to be able to read these images. This book helps the reader achieve this. So this little timeless paperback book will remain in pride of place amongst the multitude of hard cover books on my office shelf and no doubt the shelves of many homes and University libraries for many years to come. I would recommend it to anyone.
Anyone who has travelled in a less-well-off country that has a functioning advertising industry (Greece, for instance) will have noticed that billboard ads there tend to be like early 70s ads in richer countries: they promote a dream of luxury, wealth and sophistication. Ads in the UK and Ireland are aimed at people who already think of themselves as reasonably wealthy and sophisticated, and so UK and Irish ads tend to promote an idea of the consumer as being rootsy, down-to-earth, unpretentious, sensible - all the things that we secretly fear we aren't. The tactic is different, but the strategy (to play on the consumer's hopes and fears about what kind of person they are) is the same.
Berger's work is hardly full of undigested chunks of Marxist doctrine, unlike the far more impenetrable and far less useful work of (e.g.) the Art & Language group. If you come across his work when you're young or ignorant enough, he is one of the most liberating writers around. He teaches you not to agree with him, but how to be critical in the first place; he provokes you into wondering if and how he could be right, which is a gift from a writer to a reader.
This is a relatively entry-level Berger. The early novels are not really very good, except for the first one, "A Painter of our Time". The Booker-winning "G" is a masterpiece, and the more recent fiction has been equally excellent but different in tone and method. The book-length non-fiction, such as "A Fortunate Man", "A Seventh Man", "Another Way of Telling", is all superb. He is one of the best English writers and as he passes 80, his work shows no sign of declining in quality or intensity.
It should be stated that this is only the accompanying book of a TV series which, shamefully, isn't available on DVD. "Ways of Seeing" the programme is still pretty mind-blowing, right from the cheeky opening sequence where Berger appears to cut up an actual Botticelli. The whole show is, or used to be, available in bits on YouTube. I would rather sit through a TV show by Berger than the whole of Kenneth Clark's contemporary and far more expensive "Civilisation", which has been released on DVD.
My one damning criticism of this book is that, especially as it is an exploration of the visual, the quality of the reproductions is a complete disaster. Tiny, indistinct monochrome illustrations hamper the written essays and render the purely pictorial ones completely 'unreadable'. If there is a pricier hardback edition of this book available, with proper reproductions, it would be well worth the investment. If not, by all means buys the paperback, but be aware that you will only get about half of the work's true value from it.
![[Start the discussion]](http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/02/x-locale/communities/discussion_boards/start-new-discussion-sec._V192198663_.gif){kind=small}
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
