Berger begins by observing that men are represented as active, whereas women are mostly concerned with self-presentation. Berger does not explicitly connect these images rather he leaves their relationship open-ended.Ĭhapter 3 explains the relationship between images of women and how they’re represented. The theme of women appears in a variety of settings throughout history: there are photos from contemporary workplaces, oil paintings showing nude women, and advertisements for products sold by women. Text appears only occasionally to attribute paintings and photographs, and not every image is attributed. In the second essay, all of the images are related. Throughout the first essay in the book Berger draws heavily on work by Walter Benjamin to explain how reproduction changes what images mean by circulating them in new ways and alongside new ideas breaking down rarified narratives handed down from elite which often seek stabilize our understanding meanings From this premise Berger explains how images have layers deeper meaning beyond what they show on the surface they can offer a valuable document of how their creator saw the world but their underlying politics can also be obscured or mystified in order to uphold powers that be. Another way of phrasing this: all images are encoded with ideology regardless if their creators consciously want them to be. This term is used to describe paintings, photographs, films or any other representation that humans can construct and it’s assumed that every image externalizes its creator’s way of seeing.

One way to recreate our way of perceiving the world is through images. John Berger opens his seminal text Ways of Seeing with an observation that seems counterintuitive, considering its status as a written text: that, as we inhabit the world, we constantly perceive it, only later naming the things we see. 1-Page Summary of Ways Of Seeing Overview

Berger john ways of seeing