Ways of Seeing - John Berger

            

              The first part of the series Ways of Seeing by John Berger attempts to question some of the beliefs that surround traditional European painting. It doesn’t talk about the paintings themselves but about how we, especially in today’s world, see them. Berger claims that we see them as nobody else did before. The process of seeing is not as natural as we normally believe. It is actually influenced by many things such as what is around us, past experiences, etc. Traditionally the convention of perspective was used to look at these paintings. In other words, the eye (our perspective) was the center of the visible world. This limited us as the human eye can only be at one place per time. However, the invention of the camera opened up our ways of seeing and brought irrevocably changes. It gave us a fresh perception of the world. The camera transformed what we see, how we see and even paintings.

            Paintings are like the human eye – they can only be in one place at a time. However, this changed with the moment in which cameras started reproducing them. Then, paintings became available to be seeing by many people in different places at the same time. The reproduction of paintings not only made them lost their uniqueness, but also it changed their meanings. When we look at them in its original pieces we can contemplate them in its most pure experience in silence and with its stillness. Thus, a painting’s meaning can be transformed by the music that is present with it, by texts that come along with them and by the camera’s movements. For instance, close ups can take subjects of the painting out of its context giving them broader meanings. Nevertheless, this reproduction is not in its all bad. It also made paintings more accessible. Consequently these transformations brought by the reproduction of paintings have both good and bad sides, it will depend on the purpose of the person who is using the reproduction of the paintings.