Ways of Seeing

John Berger

The John Berger text is a contemporary modern day analysis of the famous theoretical text by Walter Benjamin, “ The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”

Walter Benjamin was a writer, theorist, philosopherfrom Germany of Jewish ancestry.

He was part of the Frankfurt School of writers andtheoreticians.

Through out the history of man, humans have developed different ways of seeing.

Different ways of experiencing the visible world.

As man has changed, the way we see and experiencethe world has changed and therefore the way we experience art has changed.

We are first and foremost, primarily a visual creature.

The visual comes before the written word and theother senses.

Never the less, the written word and historyhave come to influence and change the meaningsand relationships of the visible world including art.

Frans Hals, 1664 -- Regents of the Old Men's Alms House, Haarlem.

Regentesses of the Old Men’s Alms House, Haarlem.

Perspective, perfected during the early Renaissance,allows man, the spectator, to become the center ofthe universe – his point of view is the center.

This is a shift from away from god as the sole center or that god as all the all important entity.

Although god is considered to be everywhereand all knowing, there is a shift visually to the sole point of view of the spectator.

Las Meninas, 1656 – Diego Velasquez

Dziga Vertov, 1923

Man With The Movie Camera, 1929