Ways of Seeing

Berger, J. (1972). Ways of seeing. London: British Broadcasting Corporation.

Chapter 1 (7-34)
Largely drawing ideas from Walter's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Berger asserts that the authority of art is being destroyed through the modern means of reproduction and art begins to permeate among the masses. Thus, he argues, different use of the language of images would confer a new kind of power and we could begin our experiences more precisely in areas where words are inadequate--he succinctly writes, Seeing comes before words--and this experience is characterized not only with personal one but also historical one in relation to the past, which gives meaning to the present and enables us to be active agents.

"If we new languages of images were used differently, it would, through its use, confer a new kind of power. Within it we could begin to define our experiences more precisely in area where words are inadequate. (Seeing comes before words.) Not only personal experiences, but also the essential historical experience of our relation to the past: that is to say the experience of seeking to give meaning to our lives, of trying to understand the history of which we can become the active agents." (p.33)

Chapter 3 (45-64)
Berger reads the social presence of a woman through nude painting, where he asserts women are the principal, ever-recurring subjects in European oil painting. Writing, "Nudity is a form of dress," he argues that naked women are depicted for their spectator as a sign of their submissiveness and for the spectator's pleasure. In this regards, he explains the contradictory condemnation portrayed in the painting, "Vanity" (by Memling 1435-1494):

"The mirror was often used as a symbol of the vanity of women. The moralizing. however, was mostly hypocritical. You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, you put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting, "Vanity", thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure." (p.51)

Berger denotes that such tradition continues to diffuse today widely through media such as advertising, journalism and television, without changing the essential way of seeing women because the ideal spectator is assumed to be male and the image of a woman is designed to flatter to him.

[This indicates that women is a more oppressed entity for their subjectivity in the domain of visual media, whereby more vigorous subversive action needs to be taken.]