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Understanding a Photograph
John Berger's writings on photography are some of the most original of the twentieth century. This selection contains many groundbreaking essays and previously uncollected pieces written for exhibitions and catalogues in which Berger probes the work of photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson and W. Eugene Smith - and the lives of those photographed - with fierce engagement, intensity and tenderness.
The selection is made and introduced by Geoff Dyer, author of the award-winning The Ongoing Moment.
How do we see the world around us? This is one of a number of pivotal works by creative thinkers whose writings on art, design and the media have changed our vision for ever.
The selection is made and introduced by Geoff Dyer, author of the award-winning The Ongoing Moment.
How do we see the world around us? This is one of a number of pivotal works by creative thinkers whose writings on art, design and the media have changed our vision for ever.
240 pages, Paperback
First published November 7, 2013
356 people are currently reading
4526 people want to read
About the author
John Berger
288 books2,462 followersJohn Peter Berger was an English art critic, novelist, painter and author. His novel G. won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism Ways of Seeing, written as an accompaniment to a BBC series, is often used as a college text.
Later he was self exiled to continental Europe, living between the french Alps in summer and the suburbs of Paris in winter. Since then, his production has increased considerably, including a variety of genres, from novel to social essay, or poetry. One of the most common themes that appears on his books is the dialectics established between modernity and memory and loss,
Another of his most remarkable works has been the trilogy titled Into Their Labours, that includes the books Pig Earth (1979), Once In Europa (1983) Lilac And Flag (1990). With those books, Berger makes a meditation about the way of the peasant, that changes one poverty for another in the city. This theme is also observed in his novel King, but there his focus is more in the rural diaspora and the bitter side of the urban way of life.
Later he was self exiled to continental Europe, living between the french Alps in summer and the suburbs of Paris in winter. Since then, his production has increased considerably, including a variety of genres, from novel to social essay, or poetry. One of the most common themes that appears on his books is the dialectics established between modernity and memory and loss,
Another of his most remarkable works has been the trilogy titled Into Their Labours, that includes the books Pig Earth (1979), Once In Europa (1983) Lilac And Flag (1990). With those books, Berger makes a meditation about the way of the peasant, that changes one poverty for another in the city. This theme is also observed in his novel King, but there his focus is more in the rural diaspora and the bitter side of the urban way of life.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 112 reviews
January 15, 2021
In mid-2017, I left my job in the IT industry and took early retirement. One of the reasons for doing this, apart from the main reason which was simply "because I could", was to try to turn a lifelong hobby into a (very) small business. That lifelong hobby is photography. And, to be completely accurate, my interest probably didn't really kick in until after university so it more like 40 years than 60. I understand completely that I am working from a very privileged position: I get to do exactly what I want without actually needing it to generate any income.
Strangely, for someone with such a long term interest in image making and an even longer passion for reading, I have never really combined the two into reading books about photography. I was determined that retiring from work would mean I could remedy that.
I have to confess that I did little to put matters right for about 3 years. But, over recent months I have read Barthes' "Camera Lucida", Sontag's "On Photography" and now this. All three are regarded as classics and all three are very different from one another.
Here's a gross generalisation, which therefore runs the risk of being very wrong. My memories of each book (i.e. what has stayed with me) are that Barthes talked about the essence of a photograph, Sontag talked about the relationship between photography and art/reality and Berger talks about the relationship between photography and society.
There are several thought provoking essays in this collection. I'm a nature/wildlife photographer with a keen interest in the experimental side of image making. As such, I found the chapter about Jitka Hanzlová and her forest photographs the most stimulating. The second paragraph of that essay begins "Many nature photographs are like fashion shoots" which reminded me of Sontag's book where she says that for many amateur photographers a beautiful photograph is a photograph of something beautiful. Both lay down a challenge to find different ways to express beauty or to find interest. There are echoes of what Barthes refers to as the "punctum", the thing that makes a photograph come alive for the viewer.
There are other essays here that made me think about what I am doing when I take a picture. That's a good thing as long as I don't try to think about it while taking pictures. It's good to think without the camera in the hand (this is what I am doing as I write this because I had no idea what to say when I started), but I find it better to respond without thinking while taking pictures. This is like a sports person who trains so hard in order to avoid having to think whilst actually competing (the best way to ruin the serve of someone who is beating you at tennis is to ask them to describe how their serve works).
So, this is less a book a review and more some random thoughts prompted by reading a book. Or by reading three books. I enjoyed the Barthes most and the Sontag the least, so this one sits in the middle as an interesting read. There's a chapter about August Sander's photograph that inspired Richard Powers' first book ("Three farmers on their way to a dance") in which Berger concentrates on the clothes those farmers were wearing (I mention this only because I'm such a Powers fan). And there are some illuminating thoughts about several famous photographers from the twentieth century.
Strangely, for someone with such a long term interest in image making and an even longer passion for reading, I have never really combined the two into reading books about photography. I was determined that retiring from work would mean I could remedy that.
I have to confess that I did little to put matters right for about 3 years. But, over recent months I have read Barthes' "Camera Lucida", Sontag's "On Photography" and now this. All three are regarded as classics and all three are very different from one another.
Here's a gross generalisation, which therefore runs the risk of being very wrong. My memories of each book (i.e. what has stayed with me) are that Barthes talked about the essence of a photograph, Sontag talked about the relationship between photography and art/reality and Berger talks about the relationship between photography and society.
There are several thought provoking essays in this collection. I'm a nature/wildlife photographer with a keen interest in the experimental side of image making. As such, I found the chapter about Jitka Hanzlová and her forest photographs the most stimulating. The second paragraph of that essay begins "Many nature photographs are like fashion shoots" which reminded me of Sontag's book where she says that for many amateur photographers a beautiful photograph is a photograph of something beautiful. Both lay down a challenge to find different ways to express beauty or to find interest. There are echoes of what Barthes refers to as the "punctum", the thing that makes a photograph come alive for the viewer.
There are other essays here that made me think about what I am doing when I take a picture. That's a good thing as long as I don't try to think about it while taking pictures. It's good to think without the camera in the hand (this is what I am doing as I write this because I had no idea what to say when I started), but I find it better to respond without thinking while taking pictures. This is like a sports person who trains so hard in order to avoid having to think whilst actually competing (the best way to ruin the serve of someone who is beating you at tennis is to ask them to describe how their serve works).
So, this is less a book a review and more some random thoughts prompted by reading a book. Or by reading three books. I enjoyed the Barthes most and the Sontag the least, so this one sits in the middle as an interesting read. There's a chapter about August Sander's photograph that inspired Richard Powers' first book ("Three farmers on their way to a dance") in which Berger concentrates on the clothes those farmers were wearing (I mention this only because I'm such a Powers fan). And there are some illuminating thoughts about several famous photographers from the twentieth century.
January 6, 2016
John Berger eşliğinde galeri galeri gezmek gibi kitap.. Sadece fotoğrafı değil toplum-birey ilişkisini, kültürel ve siyasi suretleri de anlamak adına pek çok pencere aralıyor.
Donald McCullin fotoğraflarıyla, savaş fotoğraflarının fütursuzca yayınlanmasının altını dolduruyor. August Sander'in takım elbiseliler fotoğrafı üzerinden kültürel hegemonyayı açıklıyor. Chris Killip aracılığıyla bireyselliğin kör kayıtsızlığına dem vuruyor. Paul Strand'ın panoramik olandan kaçarak bir şehri bir sokakta bulabilmesini, Nick Waplington'un mahrem olanı nasıl alenileştirebildiğini, Moyra Peralta'nın fotoğraflarındaki insanların nasıl konuşabildiğini ve fotoğraf dilinde değil insani anlamda yakın çekimin nasıl yapılabileceğini anlatıyor. Andre Kertesz'in 'Okumaya Dair' adlı fotoğraf serisiyle, okurken hissettiğimiz uçma hissinin nasıl gözle görülebilir kılındığını, Jitka Hanzlova'nın orman fotoğraflarında anın durmadığını, adeta canlı olduklarını gösteriyor. Hemen Cartier-Bresson'un diğerkâmlığını, hayattan kâm alan gözlerini, anı yakalayışındaki hüneri hatırlatıyor.
Donald McCullin fotoğraflarıyla, savaş fotoğraflarının fütursuzca yayınlanmasının altını dolduruyor. August Sander'in takım elbiseliler fotoğrafı üzerinden kültürel hegemonyayı açıklıyor. Chris Killip aracılığıyla bireyselliğin kör kayıtsızlığına dem vuruyor. Paul Strand'ın panoramik olandan kaçarak bir şehri bir sokakta bulabilmesini, Nick Waplington'un mahrem olanı nasıl alenileştirebildiğini, Moyra Peralta'nın fotoğraflarındaki insanların nasıl konuşabildiğini ve fotoğraf dilinde değil insani anlamda yakın çekimin nasıl yapılabileceğini anlatıyor. Andre Kertesz'in 'Okumaya Dair' adlı fotoğraf serisiyle, okurken hissettiğimiz uçma hissinin nasıl gözle görülebilir kılındığını, Jitka Hanzlova'nın orman fotoğraflarında anın durmadığını, adeta canlı olduklarını gösteriyor. Hemen Cartier-Bresson'un diğerkâmlığını, hayattan kâm alan gözlerini, anı yakalayışındaki hüneri hatırlatıyor.
August 12, 2017
After reading The Shape of a Pocket and now this, I must conclude that Berger is not for me. There's something in the mix of high-minded moralism and meek aestheticism that profoundly irritates me. It's a closed discourse that doesn't open up to the reader but seems to put him or her constantly at a disadvantage. It seems to be saying that we are never subtle and wounded enough to contradict John Berger. Furthermore, Berger seems to rely on a limited set of tropes to guide his photographic hermeneutics. Constantly he invokes metaphors of the in-between, the marginal, the intangible, the not yet, the liminal. After a while this becomes tiresome and stale. There is, however, in this book one chapter I thoroughly enjoyed: a slice of correspondence with Martine Franck that sparkles with mischief and genuine camaraderie.
May 16, 2017
Come for the art theory, stay for the Marxist dialectic
February 9, 2025
While Berger's Ways of Seeing got the acclaim, this one is a far superior, insightful text. Berger's text is unlike that of Susan Sontag, he takes the layman under consideration and adds a sufficient amount of instances for comprehension. He takes about photographs as it is, and does not raise its importance above what it should be. However, still a bit dense, so need to reread it.
discarded
June 13, 2022DNF'd at 55%. I don't feel it's really worth reaching for unless you have some specific interest in any of the photographers discussed in the book.
June 12, 2017
I started reading this book because I was so enamoured by ‘Ways of Seeing’ by Berger. I think I will read his novel next. It was not as exciting as ‘Ways of Seeing’ but I realized that John Berger is someone who can shake me with words, by the way he arranges them and the meaning they contain. The book was heavy with words containing ideas which are sometimes so heavy that I almost felt these words struggle with weight of the ideas, trying hard to slither away from the author.
Here are excerpts which I liked and what I thought of them.
In the chapter ‘Understanding a Photograph’ he tries explaining what a photograph signifies.
‘A photograph is a result of the photographer’s decision that it is worth recording that this particular event or this particular object has been seen. If everything that existed were continually being photographed, every photograph would become meaningless. A photograph celebrates neither the event itself nor the faculty of sight in itself. A photograph is already a message about the event it records. The urgency of this message is not entirely dependent on the urgency of the event, but neither can it be entirely independent from it. At its simplest, the message, decoded, means: I have decided that seeing this is worth recording.’
It might sound simple perhaps, but if you think about it, you will realize how deep and true this thought is. The statement is true about every single photograph, isn’t it?
Berger continues to say,
‘This is equally true of every memorable photographs and the most banal snapshots. What distinguishes the one from the other is the degree to which the photograph explains the message, the degree to which the photograph makes the photographer’s decision transparent and comprehensible. Thus we come to the little-understood paradox of the photograph. The photograph is an automatic record through the mediation of light of a given event: yet it uses the given event to explain its recording.
Isn’t that totally mind blowing!
Photography is the process of rendering observation self-conscious.’
‘A movie director can manipulate time as a painter can manipulate the confluence of the events he depicts. Not so the still photographer. The only decision he can take is as regards the moment he chooses to isolate. Yet this apparent limitation gives the photograph its unique power. What it shows invokes what is not shown. One can look at any photograph to appreciate the truth of this. [The oft repeated line in both films and photographs that ‘what is in the frame is also what is outside the frame’]The immediate relation between what is present and what is absent is particular to each photograph: it may be that of ice to sun, of grief to a tragedy, of a smile to a pleasure, of a body to love, of a winning racehorse to the race it has run.’[In a film you don’t have to show fire. You only have to show embers. It shows fire without showing it.]
Berger says that the moment that is chosen for the photograph by the photographer decides the effectiveness of the photograph. The moment, he says should contain a ‘quantum of truth’. ‘The nature of this quantum of truth, and the ways in which it can be discerned, vary greatly. It may be found in an expression, an action, a juxtaposition, a visual ambiguity, a configuration. Nor can this truth ever be independent of the spectator.’ [Me: In a photograph of someone waving goodbye from a train about to leave, the quantum of truth can be the wave, it tells us about the occasion, the person whom the wave is directed at and many more things. This cannot be independent of the spectator. A spectator might discern these unsaid images according to their orientation and their own personal experience cloud. The wave might signify the lunch the person is soon going to have on the train for someone. It could be about the smoke the person is going to have in the train toilet soon after and the wall writings with explicit content found in every train toilet.
In ‘Political Uses of Photo-Montage’, he says this about photo montages. These days there are so many of them around. Most politicians have been subjected to these on the internet. Modi, Trump… Berger says that this way of editing photographs, juxtaposing them with other images, etc. has this as the principle behind it.
‘The peculiar advantage of photo-montage lies in the fact that everything which has been cut out keeps its familiar photographic appearance. We are still looking at things and only afterward at symbols.
But because these things have been shifted, because the natural continuities within which they normally exist have been broken and because they have now been arranged to transmit an unexpected message, we are made conscious of the arbitrariness of their continuous normal message. Their ideological covering or disguise, which fits them so well when they are in their proper place that it becomes indistinguishable from their appearances, is abruptly revealed for what it is. Appearances themselves are showing us how they deceive us.’
[There are plenty of contemporary examples to be found all around us. The example taken by Berger is that of a photo montage in which Hitler is]
‘returning the Nazi salute at a mass meeting (which we do not see). Behind him, and much larger than he is, the faceless figure of a man. This man is directly passing a wad of banknotes into Hitler’s open hand raised above his head. The message of the cartoon (October 1932) is that Hitler is being supported and financed by the big industrialists. But, more subtly, Hitler’s charismatic gesture is being divested of its accepted current meaning.] Later he says, ‘Those interested in the future didactic use of photo-montage for social and political comment should, I am sure, experiment further with this ability of the technique to demystify things.’
One of the lines in ‘Photographs of Agony’:
‘…the black blood of black-blood of black-and-white photographs’. On the effect of photographs which depict the painful reality,
Berger writes,
‘They bring us up short. The most literal adjective that could be applied is arresting. We are seized by them. (I am aware that there are people who pass them over, but about them there is nothing to say.) As we look at them, the moment of the other’s suffering engulfs us. We are filled with either despair or indignation. Despair takes on some of the other’s suffering to no purpose. Indignation demands action. We try to emerge from the moment of the photograph back into our lives. As we do, the contrast is such that the resumption of our lives appears to be a hopelessly inadequate response to what we have just seen.’
In ‘Paul Strand’, he talks about Bresson and the difference between Strand’s method and his.
‘His [Paul Strand’s] method as a photographer is more unusual. One could say that it was the antithesis to Cartier-Bresson’s. The photographic moment for Cartier-Bresson is an instant, a fraction of a second, and he stalks that instant as though it were a wild animal. The photographic moment for Strand is a biographical or historic moment, whose duration is ideally measured not by seconds but by its relation to a lifetime. Strand does not pursue an instant, but encourages a moment to arise as one might encourage a story to be told.
[Somehow I feel that this is also the difference between Bresson and Tarkovsky.]
While analysing Strand’s photographs, Berger says that what the photographer does is
‘to present himself to his subject in such a way that the subject is willing to say: I am as you see me…I am includes all that has made me so…The I am is given its time in which to reflect on the past and to anticipate its future: the exposure time does no violence to the time of the I am: on the contrary, one has the strange impression that the exposure time is the life time.’
You might be able to get an idea of what he means by taking a look at this photograph by Strand.
I feel that every time you expose this should happen. Imagine a film in which most of the shots are like this. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing to achieve!
In ‘Uses of Photography: for Susan Sontag’ he writes his responses to her book On Photography.
‘What the camera does, however, and what the eye itself can never do, is to fix the appearance of that event. It removes its appearance from the flow of appearances and it preserves it, not perhaps forever but for as long as the film exists. [These days, even more because we are digital.] The essential character of this preservation is not dependent upon the image being static; unedited film rushes preserve in essentially the same way. The camera saves a set of appearances from the otherwise inevitable suppression of further appearances. It holds them unchanging. And before the invention of camera nothing could do this, except, in the mind’s eye, the faculty of memory.’
[Isn’t that just amazing? We humans actually love memory so much that we invented a means of preserving it. Better than memory perhaps.]
‘The faculty of memory led men [by now you must have realized that Berger uses ‘men’ to mean people, like most of the world still do.] everywhere to ask whether, just as they themselves could preserve certain events from oblivion, there might not be other eyes noting and recording otherwise unwitnessed events. Such eyes they then accredited to their ancestors, to spirits, to gods or to their single deity. What was seen by this supernatural eye of men, but not this higher justice from which nothing or little could be hidden.’
‘The spectacle creates an eternal present of immediate expectation: memory ceases to be necessary or desirable. With the loss of memory the continuities of meaning and judgement are also lost to us.
[If you forget your past you might not be able to judge who is your oppressor. You could think that it is your mother who is not letting you wear certain clothes but that is because your memory does not retain the great grandfather(s) who maintained that women were raped because of their clothes]
The camera relieves us of the burden of memory. It surveys us like God, and it surveys for us. [It is not possible for anyone to forget Hitler.] Yet no god has been so cynical, for the camera records in order to forget.’
[After clicking a picture, there is a sigh of relief that it will not be forgotten anymore. Like how you feel reassured after you hit ‘save’ in a document or a video you are editing. However, this God as theorised by Sontag and Berger is different from my interpretation, mainly because Berger always saw photography through the lens of capitalism and class. I have not read On Photography.]
Berger agrees with Sontag that this cynical god who records in order to forget is the god of monopoly of capitalism. He quotes Sontag
‘A capitalist society requires a culture based on images. It needs to furnish vast amounts of entertainment in order to stimulate buying and anaesthetize the injuries of class, race, and sex.’
[I understood this part and agree with it too. The advertising industry flooded with images, photographs, manipulated and not is the biggest example. Berger believes that photographs being arrested moments will not suffice. The way capitalism is operating, it definitely will not. True. So he says,]
‘Photographs are relics of the past, traces of what has happened. If the living take tat past upon themselves, if the past becomes an integral part of the process of people making their own history, then all photographs would reacquire a living context, they would continue to exist in time, instead of being arrested moments.’[So when capitalism gives you the glossy picture of Coca-Cola, beads of icy water shining on the glass, humankind, if it remembers the past, will remember Plachimada.]
Now comes the way in which this can be achieved, which I think every photographer should keep in mind while at work.
‘For the photographer this means thinking of her- or himself not so much as a reporter to the rest of the world, but, rather, as a recorder for those involved in the events photographed. The distinction is crucial.’
‘What makes photographs like this so tragic and extraordinary is that, looking at them, one is convinced that they were not taken to please generals, to boost the morale of a civilian public, to glorify heroic soldiers, or to shock the world press: they were images addressed to those suffering what they depict. And given this integrity towards and with their subject matter, such photographs later become a memorial, to the twenty million Russians killed in the war, for those who mourn them. The unifying horror of a total people’s war made such an attitude on the part of the war photographers (and even the censors) a natural one. Photographers, however, can work with a similar attitude in less extreme circumstances.’
[The photograph cited is ‘Grief’ by Dmitri Baltermants, 1942.]
In ‘Appearances’, he says,
‘What makes photography a strange invention – with unforeseeable consequences – is that its primary raw materials are light and time.’
Berger also puts into words, some basic things that a photograph does, even when we are not aware of it, most of the time.
‘Between the moment recorded and the present moment of looking at the photograph, there is an abyss. We are so used to photography that we no longer consciously register the second of these twin messages – except in special circumstances: when, for example, the person photographed was familiar to us and is now far away or dead. In such circumstances the photograph is more traumatic than most memories or mementos because it seems to confirm, prophetically, the later discontinuity created by the absence or death.’
He goes on to explain the role of the photographer thus:
‘The professional photographer tries, when taking a photograph, to choose an instant which will persuade the public viewer to lend it an appropriate past and future. The photographer’s intelligence or his empathy with the subject defines for him what is appropriate. Yet unlike the storyteller or painter or actor, the photographer only makes, in any one photograph, a single constitutive choice: the choice of the instant to be photographed. The photograph, compared with other means of communication, is therefore weak in intentionality.’
[It is implied that other choices like framing, lighting etc. come after the choice of the instant to be photographed.]
He then goes on to explain he ambiguity of a photograph. Taking the example of a photograph titled, ‘A group of Nazi troops and students gather seized papers and books to burn in the Opernplatz, Berlin, May 10, 1933’, he explains how the photograph would be ambiguous if not for the title. Even with the title, one needs to know history to fully understand the photograph. Then he poses this heavy question.
‘…it might be that the photographic ambiguity, if recognized and accepted as such, could offer to photography a unique means of expression. Could this ambiguity suggest another way of telling?’
[Sexy.]
There is an aspect of photography that Berger pointed out that I liked very much. Unlike other forms of art, like painting, photography does not differentiate between the objects it is capturing at a given point of time.
‘…The time which exists within a drawing is not uniform. The artist gives more time to what she or he considers important. A face is likely to contain more time than the sky above it. Time in a drawing accrues according to human value. In a photograph time is uniform: every part of the image has been subjected to a chemical process of uniform duration. In the process of revelation all parts were equal.’
[The only way this is changed is when the frame is lit up by the artist. But even then, usually, lighting up is a process by which the photographer tries to make the work visible to the medium. Earlier it was celluloid. Now the lighting up is done for digital. Exposure is and can, only be uniform. Except for rolling shutters which existed during Berger’s time too, there is no change in this. Even with all the technological advancement since.]
Now comes another important aspect which becomes clear when photographs are compared to painting. Photography does not have a language. It quotes from appearances. Renaissance paintings had a language. It varies from other forms of painting during other periods in history. But photograph is produced instantaneously and there is no use of language. Berger puts it like this
‘Photographs do not translate from experiences. They quote from them.’
This is the reason why photographs are considered to be authentic. Interesting thing noted by Berger is that, tampered photographs are in fact, a proof of this. It requires elaborate tampering to create a lie out of a photograph. A photograph as it is, cannot lie. Given this situation, he explains how then, photographs are ‘massively used to deceive and misinform.’
‘We are surrounded by photographic images which constitute a global system of misinformation: the system known as publicity, proliferating consumerist lies. The role of photography in this system is revealing. The lie is constructed before the camera. A “tableau” of objects and figures is assembled. This “tableau” uses a language of symbols (often inherited, as I have pointed out elsewhere, from the iconography of oil painting), [Read ‘Ways of Seeing’ by Berger for this ‘elsewhere’] an implied narrative and, frequently, some kind of performance by models with a sexual content. This “tableau” is then photographed. It is photographed [and not drawn] precisely because the camera can bestow authenticity upon any set of appearances, however false. The camera does not lie even when it is used to quote a lie. And so, this makes the lie appear more truthful.’
In ‘Stories’ is this line.
‘The term flashback is an admission of the inexorable impatience of the film to move forward.’
How true!
Another perfect analogy from Berger:
‘No story is like a wheeled vehicle whose contact with the road is continuous. Stories walk, like animals or men. And their steps are not only between narrated events but between each sentence, sometimes each word. Every step is a stride over something not said.’
In ‘W. Eugene Smith: Notes to help Kirk Morris Make a Documentary Film’, is something that can be attempted while making films.
‘…He sought a truth, which, by its nature, was not evident. It was waiting to be revealed by him and him alone. He wanted his images to convert so that the spectator might see beyond the lies, the vanity, the illusions of everyday life…’
Interesting observation
‘…the image of a Pieta – of the man-Christ dead in his mother’s lap. An image of tenderness and bereavement. The figure of the victim, suffering or dead, is, by its nature, horizontal. The figure of the healer or the mourner is vertical…’
‘Walking Back Home: Chris Killip: In Flagrante (with Sylvia Grant)’ has this beautiful quote from Killip.
‘I saw an elderly man with a Tesco carrier and a walking stick. I was on the escalator going down and the one going up was, as usual, broken. If there’s a certainty in life, it’s that the escalator going up is broken and your shopping bag’s full. He was walking up the endless stairs and mildly struggling. Only struggling mildly. If he had been more obviously disabled or had been a mother struggling with shopping and a pram, he would have rightly inspired sympathy. He was just a little, tired, unknown man struggling mildly. He was just an old man who had maybe paid his taxes, fought for his country.
The rest of the readings can be seen here http://kunjilacinema.blogspot.in/2017...
Here are excerpts which I liked and what I thought of them.
In the chapter ‘Understanding a Photograph’ he tries explaining what a photograph signifies.
‘A photograph is a result of the photographer’s decision that it is worth recording that this particular event or this particular object has been seen. If everything that existed were continually being photographed, every photograph would become meaningless. A photograph celebrates neither the event itself nor the faculty of sight in itself. A photograph is already a message about the event it records. The urgency of this message is not entirely dependent on the urgency of the event, but neither can it be entirely independent from it. At its simplest, the message, decoded, means: I have decided that seeing this is worth recording.’
It might sound simple perhaps, but if you think about it, you will realize how deep and true this thought is. The statement is true about every single photograph, isn’t it?
Berger continues to say,
‘This is equally true of every memorable photographs and the most banal snapshots. What distinguishes the one from the other is the degree to which the photograph explains the message, the degree to which the photograph makes the photographer’s decision transparent and comprehensible. Thus we come to the little-understood paradox of the photograph. The photograph is an automatic record through the mediation of light of a given event: yet it uses the given event to explain its recording.
Isn’t that totally mind blowing!
Photography is the process of rendering observation self-conscious.’
‘A movie director can manipulate time as a painter can manipulate the confluence of the events he depicts. Not so the still photographer. The only decision he can take is as regards the moment he chooses to isolate. Yet this apparent limitation gives the photograph its unique power. What it shows invokes what is not shown. One can look at any photograph to appreciate the truth of this. [The oft repeated line in both films and photographs that ‘what is in the frame is also what is outside the frame’]The immediate relation between what is present and what is absent is particular to each photograph: it may be that of ice to sun, of grief to a tragedy, of a smile to a pleasure, of a body to love, of a winning racehorse to the race it has run.’[In a film you don’t have to show fire. You only have to show embers. It shows fire without showing it.]
Berger says that the moment that is chosen for the photograph by the photographer decides the effectiveness of the photograph. The moment, he says should contain a ‘quantum of truth’. ‘The nature of this quantum of truth, and the ways in which it can be discerned, vary greatly. It may be found in an expression, an action, a juxtaposition, a visual ambiguity, a configuration. Nor can this truth ever be independent of the spectator.’ [Me: In a photograph of someone waving goodbye from a train about to leave, the quantum of truth can be the wave, it tells us about the occasion, the person whom the wave is directed at and many more things. This cannot be independent of the spectator. A spectator might discern these unsaid images according to their orientation and their own personal experience cloud. The wave might signify the lunch the person is soon going to have on the train for someone. It could be about the smoke the person is going to have in the train toilet soon after and the wall writings with explicit content found in every train toilet.
In ‘Political Uses of Photo-Montage’, he says this about photo montages. These days there are so many of them around. Most politicians have been subjected to these on the internet. Modi, Trump… Berger says that this way of editing photographs, juxtaposing them with other images, etc. has this as the principle behind it.
‘The peculiar advantage of photo-montage lies in the fact that everything which has been cut out keeps its familiar photographic appearance. We are still looking at things and only afterward at symbols.
But because these things have been shifted, because the natural continuities within which they normally exist have been broken and because they have now been arranged to transmit an unexpected message, we are made conscious of the arbitrariness of their continuous normal message. Their ideological covering or disguise, which fits them so well when they are in their proper place that it becomes indistinguishable from their appearances, is abruptly revealed for what it is. Appearances themselves are showing us how they deceive us.’
[There are plenty of contemporary examples to be found all around us. The example taken by Berger is that of a photo montage in which Hitler is]
‘returning the Nazi salute at a mass meeting (which we do not see). Behind him, and much larger than he is, the faceless figure of a man. This man is directly passing a wad of banknotes into Hitler’s open hand raised above his head. The message of the cartoon (October 1932) is that Hitler is being supported and financed by the big industrialists. But, more subtly, Hitler’s charismatic gesture is being divested of its accepted current meaning.] Later he says, ‘Those interested in the future didactic use of photo-montage for social and political comment should, I am sure, experiment further with this ability of the technique to demystify things.’
One of the lines in ‘Photographs of Agony’:
‘…the black blood of black-blood of black-and-white photographs’. On the effect of photographs which depict the painful reality,
Berger writes,
‘They bring us up short. The most literal adjective that could be applied is arresting. We are seized by them. (I am aware that there are people who pass them over, but about them there is nothing to say.) As we look at them, the moment of the other’s suffering engulfs us. We are filled with either despair or indignation. Despair takes on some of the other’s suffering to no purpose. Indignation demands action. We try to emerge from the moment of the photograph back into our lives. As we do, the contrast is such that the resumption of our lives appears to be a hopelessly inadequate response to what we have just seen.’
In ‘Paul Strand’, he talks about Bresson and the difference between Strand’s method and his.
‘His [Paul Strand’s] method as a photographer is more unusual. One could say that it was the antithesis to Cartier-Bresson’s. The photographic moment for Cartier-Bresson is an instant, a fraction of a second, and he stalks that instant as though it were a wild animal. The photographic moment for Strand is a biographical or historic moment, whose duration is ideally measured not by seconds but by its relation to a lifetime. Strand does not pursue an instant, but encourages a moment to arise as one might encourage a story to be told.
[Somehow I feel that this is also the difference between Bresson and Tarkovsky.]
While analysing Strand’s photographs, Berger says that what the photographer does is
‘to present himself to his subject in such a way that the subject is willing to say: I am as you see me…I am includes all that has made me so…The I am is given its time in which to reflect on the past and to anticipate its future: the exposure time does no violence to the time of the I am: on the contrary, one has the strange impression that the exposure time is the life time.’
You might be able to get an idea of what he means by taking a look at this photograph by Strand.
I feel that every time you expose this should happen. Imagine a film in which most of the shots are like this. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing to achieve!
In ‘Uses of Photography: for Susan Sontag’ he writes his responses to her book On Photography.
‘What the camera does, however, and what the eye itself can never do, is to fix the appearance of that event. It removes its appearance from the flow of appearances and it preserves it, not perhaps forever but for as long as the film exists. [These days, even more because we are digital.] The essential character of this preservation is not dependent upon the image being static; unedited film rushes preserve in essentially the same way. The camera saves a set of appearances from the otherwise inevitable suppression of further appearances. It holds them unchanging. And before the invention of camera nothing could do this, except, in the mind’s eye, the faculty of memory.’
[Isn’t that just amazing? We humans actually love memory so much that we invented a means of preserving it. Better than memory perhaps.]
‘The faculty of memory led men [by now you must have realized that Berger uses ‘men’ to mean people, like most of the world still do.] everywhere to ask whether, just as they themselves could preserve certain events from oblivion, there might not be other eyes noting and recording otherwise unwitnessed events. Such eyes they then accredited to their ancestors, to spirits, to gods or to their single deity. What was seen by this supernatural eye of men, but not this higher justice from which nothing or little could be hidden.’
‘The spectacle creates an eternal present of immediate expectation: memory ceases to be necessary or desirable. With the loss of memory the continuities of meaning and judgement are also lost to us.
[If you forget your past you might not be able to judge who is your oppressor. You could think that it is your mother who is not letting you wear certain clothes but that is because your memory does not retain the great grandfather(s) who maintained that women were raped because of their clothes]
The camera relieves us of the burden of memory. It surveys us like God, and it surveys for us. [It is not possible for anyone to forget Hitler.] Yet no god has been so cynical, for the camera records in order to forget.’
[After clicking a picture, there is a sigh of relief that it will not be forgotten anymore. Like how you feel reassured after you hit ‘save’ in a document or a video you are editing. However, this God as theorised by Sontag and Berger is different from my interpretation, mainly because Berger always saw photography through the lens of capitalism and class. I have not read On Photography.]
Berger agrees with Sontag that this cynical god who records in order to forget is the god of monopoly of capitalism. He quotes Sontag
‘A capitalist society requires a culture based on images. It needs to furnish vast amounts of entertainment in order to stimulate buying and anaesthetize the injuries of class, race, and sex.’
[I understood this part and agree with it too. The advertising industry flooded with images, photographs, manipulated and not is the biggest example. Berger believes that photographs being arrested moments will not suffice. The way capitalism is operating, it definitely will not. True. So he says,]
‘Photographs are relics of the past, traces of what has happened. If the living take tat past upon themselves, if the past becomes an integral part of the process of people making their own history, then all photographs would reacquire a living context, they would continue to exist in time, instead of being arrested moments.’[So when capitalism gives you the glossy picture of Coca-Cola, beads of icy water shining on the glass, humankind, if it remembers the past, will remember Plachimada.]
Now comes the way in which this can be achieved, which I think every photographer should keep in mind while at work.
‘For the photographer this means thinking of her- or himself not so much as a reporter to the rest of the world, but, rather, as a recorder for those involved in the events photographed. The distinction is crucial.’
‘What makes photographs like this so tragic and extraordinary is that, looking at them, one is convinced that they were not taken to please generals, to boost the morale of a civilian public, to glorify heroic soldiers, or to shock the world press: they were images addressed to those suffering what they depict. And given this integrity towards and with their subject matter, such photographs later become a memorial, to the twenty million Russians killed in the war, for those who mourn them. The unifying horror of a total people’s war made such an attitude on the part of the war photographers (and even the censors) a natural one. Photographers, however, can work with a similar attitude in less extreme circumstances.’
[The photograph cited is ‘Grief’ by Dmitri Baltermants, 1942.]
In ‘Appearances’, he says,
‘What makes photography a strange invention – with unforeseeable consequences – is that its primary raw materials are light and time.’
Berger also puts into words, some basic things that a photograph does, even when we are not aware of it, most of the time.
‘Between the moment recorded and the present moment of looking at the photograph, there is an abyss. We are so used to photography that we no longer consciously register the second of these twin messages – except in special circumstances: when, for example, the person photographed was familiar to us and is now far away or dead. In such circumstances the photograph is more traumatic than most memories or mementos because it seems to confirm, prophetically, the later discontinuity created by the absence or death.’
He goes on to explain the role of the photographer thus:
‘The professional photographer tries, when taking a photograph, to choose an instant which will persuade the public viewer to lend it an appropriate past and future. The photographer’s intelligence or his empathy with the subject defines for him what is appropriate. Yet unlike the storyteller or painter or actor, the photographer only makes, in any one photograph, a single constitutive choice: the choice of the instant to be photographed. The photograph, compared with other means of communication, is therefore weak in intentionality.’
[It is implied that other choices like framing, lighting etc. come after the choice of the instant to be photographed.]
He then goes on to explain he ambiguity of a photograph. Taking the example of a photograph titled, ‘A group of Nazi troops and students gather seized papers and books to burn in the Opernplatz, Berlin, May 10, 1933’, he explains how the photograph would be ambiguous if not for the title. Even with the title, one needs to know history to fully understand the photograph. Then he poses this heavy question.
‘…it might be that the photographic ambiguity, if recognized and accepted as such, could offer to photography a unique means of expression. Could this ambiguity suggest another way of telling?’
[Sexy.]
There is an aspect of photography that Berger pointed out that I liked very much. Unlike other forms of art, like painting, photography does not differentiate between the objects it is capturing at a given point of time.
‘…The time which exists within a drawing is not uniform. The artist gives more time to what she or he considers important. A face is likely to contain more time than the sky above it. Time in a drawing accrues according to human value. In a photograph time is uniform: every part of the image has been subjected to a chemical process of uniform duration. In the process of revelation all parts were equal.’
[The only way this is changed is when the frame is lit up by the artist. But even then, usually, lighting up is a process by which the photographer tries to make the work visible to the medium. Earlier it was celluloid. Now the lighting up is done for digital. Exposure is and can, only be uniform. Except for rolling shutters which existed during Berger’s time too, there is no change in this. Even with all the technological advancement since.]
Now comes another important aspect which becomes clear when photographs are compared to painting. Photography does not have a language. It quotes from appearances. Renaissance paintings had a language. It varies from other forms of painting during other periods in history. But photograph is produced instantaneously and there is no use of language. Berger puts it like this
‘Photographs do not translate from experiences. They quote from them.’
This is the reason why photographs are considered to be authentic. Interesting thing noted by Berger is that, tampered photographs are in fact, a proof of this. It requires elaborate tampering to create a lie out of a photograph. A photograph as it is, cannot lie. Given this situation, he explains how then, photographs are ‘massively used to deceive and misinform.’
‘We are surrounded by photographic images which constitute a global system of misinformation: the system known as publicity, proliferating consumerist lies. The role of photography in this system is revealing. The lie is constructed before the camera. A “tableau” of objects and figures is assembled. This “tableau” uses a language of symbols (often inherited, as I have pointed out elsewhere, from the iconography of oil painting), [Read ‘Ways of Seeing’ by Berger for this ‘elsewhere’] an implied narrative and, frequently, some kind of performance by models with a sexual content. This “tableau” is then photographed. It is photographed [and not drawn] precisely because the camera can bestow authenticity upon any set of appearances, however false. The camera does not lie even when it is used to quote a lie. And so, this makes the lie appear more truthful.’
In ‘Stories’ is this line.
‘The term flashback is an admission of the inexorable impatience of the film to move forward.’
How true!
Another perfect analogy from Berger:
‘No story is like a wheeled vehicle whose contact with the road is continuous. Stories walk, like animals or men. And their steps are not only between narrated events but between each sentence, sometimes each word. Every step is a stride over something not said.’
In ‘W. Eugene Smith: Notes to help Kirk Morris Make a Documentary Film’, is something that can be attempted while making films.
‘…He sought a truth, which, by its nature, was not evident. It was waiting to be revealed by him and him alone. He wanted his images to convert so that the spectator might see beyond the lies, the vanity, the illusions of everyday life…’
Interesting observation
‘…the image of a Pieta – of the man-Christ dead in his mother’s lap. An image of tenderness and bereavement. The figure of the victim, suffering or dead, is, by its nature, horizontal. The figure of the healer or the mourner is vertical…’
‘Walking Back Home: Chris Killip: In Flagrante (with Sylvia Grant)’ has this beautiful quote from Killip.
‘I saw an elderly man with a Tesco carrier and a walking stick. I was on the escalator going down and the one going up was, as usual, broken. If there’s a certainty in life, it’s that the escalator going up is broken and your shopping bag’s full. He was walking up the endless stairs and mildly struggling. Only struggling mildly. If he had been more obviously disabled or had been a mother struggling with shopping and a pram, he would have rightly inspired sympathy. He was just a little, tired, unknown man struggling mildly. He was just an old man who had maybe paid his taxes, fought for his country.
The rest of the readings can be seen here http://kunjilacinema.blogspot.in/2017...
October 16, 2023
Or should be read and re-read and read again. A masterpiece I must say!
March 29, 2018
“Emperyalizmin Sureti” isimli ilk bölümle kitaba adımımı attığımda Che Guevera’nın öldükten sonra çekilmiş bir fotoğrafıyla karşılaştım. Berger bu fotoğrafı Rembrandt’ın “Dr. Nicolaes Tulp’un Anatomi Dersi” ve “Mantegna’nın Ölü İsa” adlı tablolarıyla karşılaştırmış, ölümün fotoğraf ve resimde nasıl işlendiğini, benzeşmelerini ve farklılıklarını açıklamıştı. Bu noktada anladım ki bu kitap benim için bambaşka bir deneyim olacaktı.
Günümüzde akıllı telefonlar sayesinde sosyal medyada her anımızın fotoğrafını paylaşabiliyoruz. Aslında o anı fotoğrafa indirgiyoruz. Peki, fotoğraf makinesi olmadığı zamanlar?
Berger diyor ki;
“Fotoğraf makinesi icat edilmeden önce fotoğrafın yerini ne tutuyordu? Bu soruya gravür, resim ve yağlıboya diye yanıt verilmesini bekleriz. Daha aydınlatıcı bir yanıt belki şu olabilir: bellek. Fotoğrafların dışarıda, uzamda yaptıkları, önceleri düşüncede yapılıyordu.”
Bellek… Fotoğraf işte bu belleğimizdeki görünümlerden alıntı yapar, resimler ise bu görünümlerin birer çevirisidir diyor yazar.
Berger’e göre fotoğraf “bunu görmenin kaydetmeye değer olduğuna karar verdim.” dedikleri aslında. Bu cümleden sonra kitabın içindeki fotoğraflara “birilerinin bunu görmenin kaydetmeye değer bulduğu” hissiyle bakmaya başladığımızda, o fotoğraf bambaşka bir hal almaya başlıyor.
Berger, teknik açıdan düşünülen fotoğrafın kusursuz bir kompozisyon gerektirdiği düşüncesine karşı çıkışından, fotoğrafın sanat olup olmadığına, fotomontajdan ve siyasette kullanımından, fotoğrafın bizlerde hissettirdiklerine kadar birçok konuyu deşip, okuyucunun fotoğrafa bir adım daha atmasını sağlıyor.
Her cümlesinin oturup düşünülmeye layık olduğunu düşündüğüm büyük adam, ressam, sanat eleştirmeni, yazar gibi ön birçok sıfata sahip olan bir isim John Berger. Berger okumak, Berger’in algısının kapısını tıklatıp, içeriye göz gezdirebilmek gibi. Bir Fotoğrafı anlamak, akademik bir bakış açısı değil edebi ve görsel bir bakış açısıyla fotoğrafı irdelemek isteyenler için Berger’in yayımlanmış, yayımlanmamış yazılarından oluşan etkileyici bir derleme.
Günümüzde akıllı telefonlar sayesinde sosyal medyada her anımızın fotoğrafını paylaşabiliyoruz. Aslında o anı fotoğrafa indirgiyoruz. Peki, fotoğraf makinesi olmadığı zamanlar?
Berger diyor ki;
“Fotoğraf makinesi icat edilmeden önce fotoğrafın yerini ne tutuyordu? Bu soruya gravür, resim ve yağlıboya diye yanıt verilmesini bekleriz. Daha aydınlatıcı bir yanıt belki şu olabilir: bellek. Fotoğrafların dışarıda, uzamda yaptıkları, önceleri düşüncede yapılıyordu.”
Bellek… Fotoğraf işte bu belleğimizdeki görünümlerden alıntı yapar, resimler ise bu görünümlerin birer çevirisidir diyor yazar.
Berger’e göre fotoğraf “bunu görmenin kaydetmeye değer olduğuna karar verdim.” dedikleri aslında. Bu cümleden sonra kitabın içindeki fotoğraflara “birilerinin bunu görmenin kaydetmeye değer bulduğu” hissiyle bakmaya başladığımızda, o fotoğraf bambaşka bir hal almaya başlıyor.
Berger, teknik açıdan düşünülen fotoğrafın kusursuz bir kompozisyon gerektirdiği düşüncesine karşı çıkışından, fotoğrafın sanat olup olmadığına, fotomontajdan ve siyasette kullanımından, fotoğrafın bizlerde hissettirdiklerine kadar birçok konuyu deşip, okuyucunun fotoğrafa bir adım daha atmasını sağlıyor.
Her cümlesinin oturup düşünülmeye layık olduğunu düşündüğüm büyük adam, ressam, sanat eleştirmeni, yazar gibi ön birçok sıfata sahip olan bir isim John Berger. Berger okumak, Berger’in algısının kapısını tıklatıp, içeriye göz gezdirebilmek gibi. Bir Fotoğrafı anlamak, akademik bir bakış açısı değil edebi ve görsel bir bakış açısıyla fotoğrafı irdelemek isteyenler için Berger’in yayımlanmış, yayımlanmamış yazılarından oluşan etkileyici bir derleme.
Read
June 4, 2017Teknolojinin gelişmesi ile birlikte hemen hemen hepimiz herhangi bir sosyal medya platformu başta olmak üzere gün içerisinde yüzlerce, binlerce fotoğrafla karşı karşıya kalıyoruz. Bunları bir kısmına "maruz kalıyoruz" bir kısmına ise dikkat ederek göz atıyoruz. Bu karşılaştığımız fotoğraflardan kayda değer olanları hakkında fikir yürütebiliyor veya daha kısa ifade ile anlayabiliyor muyuz? John Berger bu kitapta işte bunları anlatmaya çalışıyor. Elbette "Photography 101" şeklinde anlatmıyor bunları. Bir sergiyi gezerken, elinize bir fotoğrafı aldığınızda gördüklerinizin aslında size neler hissettirdiğini kendi üslubuyla aktarıyor. Kitap, Berger'in muhtelif yıllarda yazdığı makaleleri ve bazı kitaplarından bazı bölümlerinden alıntılanmasından oluşuyor. Fotoğrafa ve fotoğrafçılığa ilgi duyan ya da bu işin felsefesini, görsel açıdan düşünce dünyasını anlamak isteyenlere önemli bir kaynak niteliğinde. Deklanşöre basmanın fotoğrafı oluşturmayacağı, onu yakalarken aslında neden o "an"ı kaydediliğini görmenizi sağlayacak nitelikte bir kitap.
January 28, 2017
Anni, o forse intere ere geologiche sono trascorse da quando non sentivo il bisogno di tenere in mano una matita per leggere. Questo libro eterogeneo, costituito da una scelta di brani scritti tra il ’68 e il 2007, che può apparire dispersivo o inconsistente, è un’autentica miniera di emozioni, riflessioni importanti, metafore illuminanti, riletture originali, connessioni azzardate che ti costringe a sottolineare, prendere appunti, aggiungere pensieri. La fotografia e la memoria, la fotografia e il narrare, la fotografia e la nostra percezione del tempo, la fotografia e il nostro bisogno umano di riconoscere ed essere riconosciuti. E ancora tante altre cose, in un lungo discorso fatto di narrazione, filosofia, poesia. A tratti complesso, in altri momenti semplice come una chiacchierata con un amico. Appassionante, sempre.
February 19, 2017
Great writing, of course, but as a book a bit bereft without being able to see way more of the photos he's talking about.
June 25, 2016
Bir fotoğraf konuşur mu? Yoksa biz ona baktığımızda, gördüğümüz imajları; tarihsel, toplumsal veya ideolojik bağlamda imgelemimizde, bize anımsattıkları, çağrıştırdıkları çerçevesinde mi onu yorumlarız? Fotoğrafın çekildiği o an'a ait koşullar ile bizim baktığımız an'da gördüğümüz şey(ler), dünyadaki yer tutuculuğumuza göre sayısız olasılık içeriyor. Bu olasılıklar fotoğrafın güncel bir imajının olmasına, kişisel geçmişimize ya da duygularımıza ait bağlamlara göre çeşitleniyor . John Berger'e göre sayısız olasılıklar, fotoğrafın bizde çağrıştırdığı-anımsattığına doğru yönelerek onun üstünde toplanıyorlar. İşte bu küçük toplantı yeri, fotoğrafta gördüğümüz oluyor.
Kitap, Berger'in önceki kitaplarından bölümleri ve herhangi bir kitabında yer almamış metinleri de içeren özel bir edisyon. Beni en çok etkileyen yerlerden biri, Che'nin ölü bedeninin göründüğü fotoğrafta İsa metaforu üzerinden işlenen ölümsüzlük temasıydı. Bir diğer çarpıcı bulduğum bölüm, August Sander'ın dansa giden üç köylü fotoğrafında sınıfsal baskı ve iktidarın idealleştirilmesinin teşhirini yapmasıydı.
Kitap, Berger'in önceki kitaplarından bölümleri ve herhangi bir kitabında yer almamış metinleri de içeren özel bir edisyon. Beni en çok etkileyen yerlerden biri, Che'nin ölü bedeninin göründüğü fotoğrafta İsa metaforu üzerinden işlenen ölümsüzlük temasıydı. Bir diğer çarpıcı bulduğum bölüm, August Sander'ın dansa giden üç köylü fotoğrafında sınıfsal baskı ve iktidarın idealleştirilmesinin teşhirini yapmasıydı.
June 6, 2025
Quote from an interview with Cartier-Bresson:
"People ask me about my new projects, he says, smiling. What shall I say to them? To make love tonight. To do another drawing this afternoon. To be surprised!"
"People ask me about my new projects, he says, smiling. What shall I say to them? To make love tonight. To do another drawing this afternoon. To be surprised!"
May 30, 2025
I understand that capitalism is hell
Read
January 15, 2022naisu guy
(
-has a point
-explans the point without talking too much about lacan
-is marxist
_
(
-has a point
-explans the point without talking too much about lacan
-is marxist
_
September 25, 2015
Si por algo conocemos a John Berger no es solamente por sus estupendos dibujos, sino también por sus trabajos teóricos en torno a la fotografía y lo creativo. En Para entender la fotografía, editado por Gustavo Gili, tenemos una amplia selección de ensayos y textos que giran alrededor de todo aquello relacionado con el mundo fotográfico, sobre el que Berger ha escrito durante estos años. De este modo, el autor nos adentra en el tema con el ánimo de descubrir nuevos fotógrafos y ahondar en sus obras. A través de textos que, sin duda, invitan a buscar sentido a las cosas. Que nos adentran en la fotografía de Sebastiao Salgado, Jean Mohr, Martine Franck, Henri Cartier Bresson, André Kertész, Nick Waplington, Chris Killip, W. Eugene Smith, Markéta Luscacová, Marc Trivier o Paul Strand, así como en la teoría crítica de Susan Sontag, a la que Berger hace unos cuantos guiños; como bien dice su autor en uno de los textos, siempre intenta poner en palabras lo que ve, y aquí, en esta presente edición, hace uso de ello.
La fotografía siempre ha estado íntimamente ligada con lo histórico y lo humano. En Para entender la fotografía podemos ver cómo la mirada de cada fotógrafo, aunque Berger anote en cada texto su punto de vista, arroja un poco de luz sobre lo que la fotografía ha aportado a través de todos estos años, tanto en el ámbito social como cultural, personal, documental y antropológico. Cada fotógrafo nos ayuda a ver su manera de fotografiar la vida y cómo el mundo tiene algo que ver con lo que el ser humano va buscando a través de su trayectoria vital. La extroversión/introversión que cada autor tiene con su obra se ve de una forma clara y concisa, haciendo de este libro un aporte lúcido y con gran detalle para lo que entendemos como fotografía y, de algún modo también, el mundo del arte. Aquí la fotografía es la principal compañía de cada autor.
Si algo hay que destacar es la importancia de la luz en todas sus variantes. Tanto desde el punto de vista técnico como desde el punto de vista poético. Se pone en claro cómo desde la invención de la cámara fotográfica se aportaba una mirada diferente a la conciencia de sí y del punto de vista social, ya que en aquellos momentos la fotografía era considerada un prodigio, pues preservaba el aspecto de las cosas. Conforme fue pasando el tiempo, empezaron a destacar el humanismo y la certeza que podemos hallar en esta técnica, pues en ella siempre encontramos un significado. De este modo, observamos que la fotografía no traduce las apariencias, sino que las cita.
Encontramos que la fotografía también sirve para pensar y hallar soluciones. Así, no solo vemos la fotografía como un instrumento para conocer el mundo de las apariencias, sino también para ahondar en él. Muchas veces tenemos que profundizar en la historia y los acontecimientos sociales para poder entenderla y lograr de este modo un significado en ella. Sin embargo, la fotografía también sirve para crear metáforas, ya que de esta manera podemos encontrarle sentido a las cosas. Toda fotografía nos presenta dos mensajes: un mensaje relativo al suceso fotografiado y otro relativo a la percepción de cada fotógrafo; como decía Joyce: «el verdadero arte necesita del encanto y la exactitud de las imágenes singulares, de las visiones incompletas y sesgadas.» La fotografía es así, un punto de encuentro y de sinergia entre estas dos vertientes en las que se halla.
El ahora de cada vida es único y la fotografía nos ayuda a encontrar y buscar la verdad o mentira tras cada paso que da. Ella es más simple que nuestros recuerdos, pues su paso es limitado. Así, cuando vemos fotos, encontramos siempre fronteras, pero también profundidad, pensamiento o sentimiento. Y ahí está la paradoja y la gran aventura que notamos en ella, lo que Berger nos ayuda a vislumbrar en este estupendo libro: que, aunque su campo es limitado, en ella podemos encontrarlo todo.
La fotografía siempre ha estado íntimamente ligada con lo histórico y lo humano. En Para entender la fotografía podemos ver cómo la mirada de cada fotógrafo, aunque Berger anote en cada texto su punto de vista, arroja un poco de luz sobre lo que la fotografía ha aportado a través de todos estos años, tanto en el ámbito social como cultural, personal, documental y antropológico. Cada fotógrafo nos ayuda a ver su manera de fotografiar la vida y cómo el mundo tiene algo que ver con lo que el ser humano va buscando a través de su trayectoria vital. La extroversión/introversión que cada autor tiene con su obra se ve de una forma clara y concisa, haciendo de este libro un aporte lúcido y con gran detalle para lo que entendemos como fotografía y, de algún modo también, el mundo del arte. Aquí la fotografía es la principal compañía de cada autor.
Si algo hay que destacar es la importancia de la luz en todas sus variantes. Tanto desde el punto de vista técnico como desde el punto de vista poético. Se pone en claro cómo desde la invención de la cámara fotográfica se aportaba una mirada diferente a la conciencia de sí y del punto de vista social, ya que en aquellos momentos la fotografía era considerada un prodigio, pues preservaba el aspecto de las cosas. Conforme fue pasando el tiempo, empezaron a destacar el humanismo y la certeza que podemos hallar en esta técnica, pues en ella siempre encontramos un significado. De este modo, observamos que la fotografía no traduce las apariencias, sino que las cita.
Encontramos que la fotografía también sirve para pensar y hallar soluciones. Así, no solo vemos la fotografía como un instrumento para conocer el mundo de las apariencias, sino también para ahondar en él. Muchas veces tenemos que profundizar en la historia y los acontecimientos sociales para poder entenderla y lograr de este modo un significado en ella. Sin embargo, la fotografía también sirve para crear metáforas, ya que de esta manera podemos encontrarle sentido a las cosas. Toda fotografía nos presenta dos mensajes: un mensaje relativo al suceso fotografiado y otro relativo a la percepción de cada fotógrafo; como decía Joyce: «el verdadero arte necesita del encanto y la exactitud de las imágenes singulares, de las visiones incompletas y sesgadas.» La fotografía es así, un punto de encuentro y de sinergia entre estas dos vertientes en las que se halla.
El ahora de cada vida es único y la fotografía nos ayuda a encontrar y buscar la verdad o mentira tras cada paso que da. Ella es más simple que nuestros recuerdos, pues su paso es limitado. Así, cuando vemos fotos, encontramos siempre fronteras, pero también profundidad, pensamiento o sentimiento. Y ahí está la paradoja y la gran aventura que notamos en ella, lo que Berger nos ayuda a vislumbrar en este estupendo libro: que, aunque su campo es limitado, en ella podemos encontrarlo todo.
July 23, 2024
Elég biztos voltam benne, hogy tetszeni fog, de hogy ennyire <3
Egyrészt nagyon sok új és érdekes dolgot olvastam, másrészt nagyon megnyugtató volt látni ismert szerzők neveit hivatkozva. Az egész könyv olvasása során végig ismerősség-érzésem volt, bele tudtam merülni a szövegekbe és bármennyire is felfedezetlen terület ez számomra, nekem is szóltak.
Három idézetet ki is írtam magamnak és sokszor annyi mondat/bekezdés van, ami megpendített valamit bennem. Mivel elsősorban ezért az élményért olvasok, ezért nagyon szerettem ezt a könyvet.
Egyrészt nagyon sok új és érdekes dolgot olvastam, másrészt nagyon megnyugtató volt látni ismert szerzők neveit hivatkozva. Az egész könyv olvasása során végig ismerősség-érzésem volt, bele tudtam merülni a szövegekbe és bármennyire is felfedezetlen terület ez számomra, nekem is szóltak.
Három idézetet ki is írtam magamnak és sokszor annyi mondat/bekezdés van, ami megpendített valamit bennem. Mivel elsősorban ezért az élményért olvasok, ezért nagyon szerettem ezt a könyvet.
April 26, 2020
I couldn't finish this book. It's one of the few I haven't.
There are a few nuggets of good advice and observations in there, but you have to work really hard to dig them out.
The prose is heavy and doesn't flow. A typical critic who imposes more meaning on the photograph beyond what the original photographer envisioned and saw.
There are a few nuggets of good advice and observations in there, but you have to work really hard to dig them out.
The prose is heavy and doesn't flow. A typical critic who imposes more meaning on the photograph beyond what the original photographer envisioned and saw.
September 18, 2017
kaip visai žalia foto srityje, iš susan sontag aš išmokau daugiau - mokymosi prasme, bet bergeris yra tiesiog įtekstinta laimė. be proto gražiai - ir turiningai (kas ne visada sutampa) - rašo apie foto, tiksliau, per jas - apie didesnius dalykus, gyvenimą, transcendencijas. nu tikrai laimė.
January 9, 2024
Conecto tanto con la sensibilidad de Berger. Qué bonita colección de ensayos sobre la fotografía. Fotografía como observación consciente, como recuerdo de lo ausente, como sustituta de la memoria, como instante o como momento histórico, como muchos tiempos verbales diferentes.
"La fotografía es un impulso espontáneo, resultado de estar permanentemente mirando, que atrapa el instante y su eternidad".
La colección explora tantas formas de fotografía y yo en todas me quedaba pensando en la manera tan bonita y profunda en que Berger intenta comprender el mundo. Y he conocido y entendido mejor (o desde un lugar más delicado) la obra de fotógrafos de los que he aprendido mucho por leer estas reflexiones.
Me gusta cómo explica los retratos de August Sander: las personas de sus fotos tienen una mirada sin vanidad ni vergüenza que parece utilizar un extraño tiempo verbal histórico y preguntarse "¿así era yo?". Sobre Paul Strand dice que retrata momentos biográficos cuya duración no se mide en segundos sino en su relación con toda una vida (sus fotos son diques que detienen las aguas). Los sujetos de Strand parecen decir "yo soy como me estás viendo" ("yo soy" que incluye todo lo que me ha hecho ser así). El tiempo de exposición de las fotos de Strand es toda la vida. Y cuando habla de Marc Trivier explica que las personas que retrata observan como el tiempo humano continuo se va (!!!!!). Me ha encantado (ENCANTADO) el ensayo sobre Marc Trivier. Berger dice que sus fotos sugieren que un mundo no fotografiado podría parecerse a una casa sin tiempo (o que ha perdido la conciencia del tiempo): sus fotos extienden indefinidamente el presente. Aunque el ahora de cada vida es único, en las fotos de Trivier el pasado y el futuro han quedado detenidos de la misma forma para todos (todos escuchan el silencio de esta interrupción).
"Detener el pasado y el futuro puede ser, no obstante, una manera de entrar momentáneamente en la eternidad. Lo opuesto a lo eterno no es lo efímero, sino lo olvidado".
La fotografía de Trivier propone que las cámaras y los relojes son complementarios y vuelve a llevarnos a pensar en el tiempo (ah la nostalgia implícita en toda foto). Y sobre la relación fotografía-tiempo Berger escribe muchísimo: una foto puede ralentizar el tiempo hasta alcanzar un punto muerto, puede interrumpir detener el tiempo y puede hacerlo ceremonialmente... y también hay fotos tomadas donde no hay tiempo alguno y éstas nos permiten escapar de la prisión que es el tiempo moderno.
Mis textos prefes han sido Fotografías de la agonía, Un hombre mendigando en el metro, Homenaje a Cartier-Bresson y Entre aquí y entonces. Los releeré mil veces.
"No és fácil mirarle a los ojos sin sentir que estás siendo poco delicado. Están totalmente expuestos, no por ser inocentes, sino por su adicción a la observación. Si los ojos son una ventana del alma, la suya no tiene postigos ni cortinas, y él está en el marco, pero es imposible ver más allá de su mirada" (sobre Cartier-Bresson)
Me encantaría una edición de este libro que incluyera todas las fotos que se mencionan, a veces me ha sido difícil encontrarlas.
"La fotografía es un impulso espontáneo, resultado de estar permanentemente mirando, que atrapa el instante y su eternidad".
La colección explora tantas formas de fotografía y yo en todas me quedaba pensando en la manera tan bonita y profunda en que Berger intenta comprender el mundo. Y he conocido y entendido mejor (o desde un lugar más delicado) la obra de fotógrafos de los que he aprendido mucho por leer estas reflexiones.
Me gusta cómo explica los retratos de August Sander: las personas de sus fotos tienen una mirada sin vanidad ni vergüenza que parece utilizar un extraño tiempo verbal histórico y preguntarse "¿así era yo?". Sobre Paul Strand dice que retrata momentos biográficos cuya duración no se mide en segundos sino en su relación con toda una vida (sus fotos son diques que detienen las aguas). Los sujetos de Strand parecen decir "yo soy como me estás viendo" ("yo soy" que incluye todo lo que me ha hecho ser así). El tiempo de exposición de las fotos de Strand es toda la vida. Y cuando habla de Marc Trivier explica que las personas que retrata observan como el tiempo humano continuo se va (!!!!!). Me ha encantado (ENCANTADO) el ensayo sobre Marc Trivier. Berger dice que sus fotos sugieren que un mundo no fotografiado podría parecerse a una casa sin tiempo (o que ha perdido la conciencia del tiempo): sus fotos extienden indefinidamente el presente. Aunque el ahora de cada vida es único, en las fotos de Trivier el pasado y el futuro han quedado detenidos de la misma forma para todos (todos escuchan el silencio de esta interrupción).
"Detener el pasado y el futuro puede ser, no obstante, una manera de entrar momentáneamente en la eternidad. Lo opuesto a lo eterno no es lo efímero, sino lo olvidado".
La fotografía de Trivier propone que las cámaras y los relojes son complementarios y vuelve a llevarnos a pensar en el tiempo (ah la nostalgia implícita en toda foto). Y sobre la relación fotografía-tiempo Berger escribe muchísimo: una foto puede ralentizar el tiempo hasta alcanzar un punto muerto, puede interrumpir detener el tiempo y puede hacerlo ceremonialmente... y también hay fotos tomadas donde no hay tiempo alguno y éstas nos permiten escapar de la prisión que es el tiempo moderno.
Mis textos prefes han sido Fotografías de la agonía, Un hombre mendigando en el metro, Homenaje a Cartier-Bresson y Entre aquí y entonces. Los releeré mil veces.
"No és fácil mirarle a los ojos sin sentir que estás siendo poco delicado. Están totalmente expuestos, no por ser inocentes, sino por su adicción a la observación. Si los ojos son una ventana del alma, la suya no tiene postigos ni cortinas, y él está en el marco, pero es imposible ver más allá de su mirada" (sobre Cartier-Bresson)
Me encantaría una edición de este libro que incluyera todas las fotos que se mencionan, a veces me ha sido difícil encontrarlas.
July 10, 2024
“The sight of any single thing or event entrains the sight of other things and events. To recognize an appearance requires the memory of other appearances. And these memories, often projected as expectations, continue to qualify the seen long after the stage of primary recognition. […] One image interpenetrates another.
As soon as we say that appearances cohere this coherence proposes a unity not unlike that of language.”
I have to admit that I was not expecting this book at all. Truth be told, I saw it and decided to read it thinking it was more about technical aspects and the explanation as to why they are important when analysing a photograph. And as soon as I started reading it, I realised I was in for a thoughtful ride.
Berger’s main achievement, I guess, is to really make the reader understand that appreciating, looking into, and connecting to art — and in this specific case, photography, not a fine art according to him for interesting reasons he also explains — has more to do with how the viewer can relate everything s/he knows to it, to what it says, and to what is telling you it doesn’t say, too. Just in case, do not ever confuse that with how the photograph made you feel. Read it perhaps more in the line of intertextuality, though not exclusively, most certainly.
In any case, this book is a gathering of several essays over the expanse of almost 40 years. It is a gathering of concepts which photography and specific photographs bring forth to Berger’s understanding in its interaction with them: appearances, political positioning, agonies, storytelling, identity, time, etc. — to do so, Berger embraces the work of outstanding photographers like Kertész, Cartier Bresson, Mohr, Salgado and Franck, to name a few, as well as ‘conversing’ with theorists like Sontag or Barthes, among others.
November 11, 2020
This collection contains some very interesting essays useful to understand and look from a different perspective at what photography is and how we could interpret the content of some photographs, as well as the activity of some famous photographers. However, my problem with Berger (which I ntoiced in Ways of Seeing as well) is that his judgments on art almost always ends up being a critique to capitalism and to the faults of a globalized society. I have nothing against these legitimate opinions and to a political interpratation of art in general (art is always political), but my impression is that instead of analysing the artistic content from the point of view of the artist's political ideas, he does so according to his own political ideas, therefore not providing an accurate and objective explanation of what a work of art is about - that results in the essays not being so useful to enlarge one's understanding in the end. Anyway the ones i liked the most were The suit and the photograph, Appearances, Stories, Martine Frank and Marc Trivier: my beautiful.
August 1, 2019
'Beauty is the hope of being recognized by, and included within, the existence of what you're looking at.'
Apart from that profound insight, the collection reflects heavily on Marxist theory, Giacometti and photographers such as Jean Mohr, André Kertesz and Henri Cartier-Bresson.
The twin ideas of rupture and the spaces that exist between colliding times are the driving factors behind the theory of aesthetics that is posited. A theory that, for me at least, does try to explain what a photograph is, both in a practical and in a more abstract and philosophical sense. I feel that I need more words to explain exactly what that explanation is. Also, I don't think I understood all of what Mr. Berger wrote, but the part I understood was excellent, and so too was the part I did not understand.
A final shoutout to the essay on Jitka Hanzlová as it brings together temporal ruptures, liminality and multitudinality.
Apart from that profound insight, the collection reflects heavily on Marxist theory, Giacometti and photographers such as Jean Mohr, André Kertesz and Henri Cartier-Bresson.
The twin ideas of rupture and the spaces that exist between colliding times are the driving factors behind the theory of aesthetics that is posited. A theory that, for me at least, does try to explain what a photograph is, both in a practical and in a more abstract and philosophical sense. I feel that I need more words to explain exactly what that explanation is. Also, I don't think I understood all of what Mr. Berger wrote, but the part I understood was excellent, and so too was the part I did not understand.
A final shoutout to the essay on Jitka Hanzlová as it brings together temporal ruptures, liminality and multitudinality.
November 3, 2024
Second half of this bundle of essays is certainly of the better. Particularly the ones on Markéta Luskačová and W. Eugene Smith are great reads and essay Walking Back Home about Chris Killips impressive work ‘In Flagrante’ made me want to review the photo documentary work of Killip again right away. Also the essays on Waplington’s work and Cartier-Bresson are great but the peak of this bundle is the (fax) letter-exchange between Berger and Martine Franck. I wish there were more and makes me wonder whether a book of just letters exchanged between Berger and the people he met wouldn’t be just the best.
May 15, 2018
Loved reading Berger's essays. In fact, I will go read About Looking from him.
Read
September 3, 2022read this for university
September 13, 2023
really interesting and thought provoking and i simply adore berger's way of writing
January 22, 2024
özellikle kitabın sonlarındaki denemelerde bazı düşüncelerini takip edemedim, bazılarında sıkıldım takip etmeyi denemedim. fotoğraf üzerine daha çok düşündüğüm bir zamanda geri dönülebilecek bir kitap (emperyalizmin sureti ve ıstırabın fotoğrafları ise her zaman geri dönebileceğim bölümler)
yine de bana tanıttığı fotoğrafçılar için müteşekkirim.
yine de bana tanıttığı fotoğrafçılar için müteşekkirim.
April 15, 2025
[Revised November 14, 2022]
The title essay in this collection tells us that this is the key to understanding a photograph:
“A photograph is effective when the chosen moment which it records contains a quantum of truth which is generally applicable, which is as revealing about what is absent from the photograph as about what is present in it.” (p. 26)
At first glance, Berger seems to be saying only that a photograph should be relevant to something not depicted in it, something that seems to be true of all photographs -- a photograph of a baseball player is relevant to baseball, for example. A family photograph is relevant to other members of the family. A close-up detail of a plumbing fixture, no matter how unidentifiable, is relevant to plumbing. Even an abstract photograph is relevant to the history of abstraction in imagery. However, he goes on. Every effective photograph has a message, Berger writes, and the message is:
“The degree to which I [that is, the photographer] believe this is worth looking at can be judged by all that I am willingly not showing because it is contained within it.” (p. 26)
This seems to be an attempt to turn Hemingway's iceberg theory around. Hemingway thought that a writer who understood a subject could leave some of their knowledge out of a story and still leave the reader with a "feeling" of what they had left out. However, iceberg theory, valid or not, does not logically imply Berger's criterion. And I doubt that Hemingway would have made the same assertion about photography.
This idea doesn’t even work on Berger’s terms, since there is no reliable way of determining what was willingly left out, what was left out unwillingly, what was included unwittingly, what was just ignored, and what didn’t even come to mind. How is a portrait of a head, for example, more "worth looking at" than a portrait that shows the shoulders as well? The photographer has left out more, but how does that add worth?
Furthermore, Berger is ignoring the possibility that the photographer doesn't understand their subject. I don't think Hemingway would have approved of a writer who omitted details without understanding their subject.
And of course Berger is begging the question of what the effectiveness of a photograph is.
He then proceeds to ignore these principles in his own analyses of photographs. His gushing analysis of Paul Strand’s “Photograph of Mr. Bennett, Vermont” doesn’t mention what Strand excluded from the photo, for example, and is founded in large part on speculation (that the unpainted clapboard building behind Mr. Bennett is a house, for example). At first glance I took Mr. Bennett to be a farmer standing in front of one of his outbuildings, but of course that is wildly speculative, too, and based on stereotypes of rural life. So how can either Berger or I evaluate what was willingly not shown, when we can’t be sure what was willingly shown? I like the photo myself. The extremely fine detail gives the photo what Stephen Shore has described as an air of hyper-reality, a hyper-reality that makes it striking and helps us apprehend the entire photo immediately (your response may vary), but then the physical characteristics of a photo and the act of viewing are of no interest to Berger – to him the effectiveness of a photo is all about its message, a message that he cannot define objectively.
The title essay in this collection tells us that this is the key to understanding a photograph:
“A photograph is effective when the chosen moment which it records contains a quantum of truth which is generally applicable, which is as revealing about what is absent from the photograph as about what is present in it.” (p. 26)
At first glance, Berger seems to be saying only that a photograph should be relevant to something not depicted in it, something that seems to be true of all photographs -- a photograph of a baseball player is relevant to baseball, for example. A family photograph is relevant to other members of the family. A close-up detail of a plumbing fixture, no matter how unidentifiable, is relevant to plumbing. Even an abstract photograph is relevant to the history of abstraction in imagery. However, he goes on. Every effective photograph has a message, Berger writes, and the message is:
“The degree to which I [that is, the photographer] believe this is worth looking at can be judged by all that I am willingly not showing because it is contained within it.” (p. 26)
This seems to be an attempt to turn Hemingway's iceberg theory around. Hemingway thought that a writer who understood a subject could leave some of their knowledge out of a story and still leave the reader with a "feeling" of what they had left out. However, iceberg theory, valid or not, does not logically imply Berger's criterion. And I doubt that Hemingway would have made the same assertion about photography.
This idea doesn’t even work on Berger’s terms, since there is no reliable way of determining what was willingly left out, what was left out unwillingly, what was included unwittingly, what was just ignored, and what didn’t even come to mind. How is a portrait of a head, for example, more "worth looking at" than a portrait that shows the shoulders as well? The photographer has left out more, but how does that add worth?
Furthermore, Berger is ignoring the possibility that the photographer doesn't understand their subject. I don't think Hemingway would have approved of a writer who omitted details without understanding their subject.
And of course Berger is begging the question of what the effectiveness of a photograph is.
He then proceeds to ignore these principles in his own analyses of photographs. His gushing analysis of Paul Strand’s “Photograph of Mr. Bennett, Vermont” doesn’t mention what Strand excluded from the photo, for example, and is founded in large part on speculation (that the unpainted clapboard building behind Mr. Bennett is a house, for example). At first glance I took Mr. Bennett to be a farmer standing in front of one of his outbuildings, but of course that is wildly speculative, too, and based on stereotypes of rural life. So how can either Berger or I evaluate what was willingly not shown, when we can’t be sure what was willingly shown? I like the photo myself. The extremely fine detail gives the photo what Stephen Shore has described as an air of hyper-reality, a hyper-reality that makes it striking and helps us apprehend the entire photo immediately (your response may vary), but then the physical characteristics of a photo and the act of viewing are of no interest to Berger – to him the effectiveness of a photo is all about its message, a message that he cannot define objectively.
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