Ways of Seeing

John Berger’s documentary Ways of Seeing raises questions regarding Western cultural aesthetics and whether they have a hidden, or specifically, ideologies in visual images. Seeing is the habit of convention. Perspective makes the eye the center of the world. However, can the eye be wrong?

Part one discusses the invention of the camera and how this simple device has revolutionized the world. Beforehand, people from all walks of life would travel; take pilgrimages to journey to churches and temples just to witness the magnificent holy relics and art they housed. The revolutionary novelty behind cameras came from their ability to commodify space and time. Images were now transmittable; they could be reproduced and copied. This new technology, however, with ability to copy images, has sparked a new trend in which an image’s market value is based on its authenticity.

  Later, Berger discusses the idea that an image can be a source of information. Berger found that an image could be interpretive.

Nice picture of Daughter helping Father.

An image’s meaning could be manipulated if one changed or cast aside certain elements (i.e. cropping) for it to restate a new meaning. 

Chaos

Nevertheless, even if an image remains unaltered, to be a source of information it must hold its own against other streams of information. It can have its own character. Images can relate to other’s experiences and their interpretation might be dissimilar.

Part two examines women, nudity, and the roles they both serve in art and imagery. People have become increasingly self-conscious about their bodies, most especially women. Centuries of being the subject of idealized feminine beauty have taken their toll on the female self-esteem. Women are painted nude, but they are not ‘naked’. Berger describes nakedness and nudity as two distinct beasts. Nakedness is simply the state of undress, Nudity, however, is a state of dress. Nudity must be seen as objective, appealing to the male sexuality, while women’s are unimportant, or as Berger states, “To plead an appetite, not to have any of their own.”

The ideal feminine beauty is the eye of the beholder, however, women themselves have trouble identifying with painted women. Berger interviewed a group of women and a couple of them expressed dissatisfaction with how the gender has been portrayed in art. Women were painted to satisfy the male appetite, and women have trouble identifying with painted women because their bodies were painted with exaggerated features to conform to the ideal female form. However, the women being interviewed expressed no discontent towards photographs. Photographs are able to capture women as they are, no exaggeration, just realism, which makes it easier for them to identify with than they would with a painting. 

Which sadly, in hindsight, the sentiment was said in the 70s and is rendered moot in the advent of Photoshop and eating disorders.

Before-After 

Part three expands on the idea that images can be sources of information and their value. Art’s market value is based both on their authenticity and uniqueness. They’re materialistic objects that reflect highly of their owners. As art evolved over the years with increasing emphasis on the real (the idea of real being something you can see and touch), their owners thought of the idea of art reflecting what is real about them. Images portraits were commissioned with the expressed purpose of making a statement about their subjects, specifically flaunting statements about their social status. 

I'm not compensating for anyhing.

Some portraits would feature ideas and icons from classical mythology, specialized knowledge only the privileged minority knew; portraits would be painted with oil paint, a medium favored to celebrate private possessions and elegance. However, Berger pointed out that some images can contradict their source material, using Mary of Magdalene as an example. Mary of Magdalene was a biblical figure and a prostitute, believed to have slept or at least, been associated with Jesus before his crucifixion. However, the portraits Berger used portrayed Mary in a positive light, as a figure of beauty and eligibility rather than an object of scorn. Berger surmised that the reason behind the oil painting portraits is that people, in essence, are narcissists. 

I love me.

We desire assurance of our own worth and identity that we use luxurious things to vindicate it. Which is why we use oil paint, until photography rolled around and became a better medium convey wealth.

Part four centers on human narcissism and the impact it’s had on the twentieth century. Grace, elegance, and authority were old ideas that were to be desired in the old days, until the idea of glamour appeared. Glamour is the quality of attractiveness and excitability that makes certain people or things seem more special and appealing. It’s an idea that expanded when people commissioned glamorous portraits of themselves, and it seems to have gained momentum in the advent of commercialized media and publicity by feeding off a steady diet of our social envy, because without it, it wouldn’t exist.

The media and publicity use images to promote an item and entice you with promises that your life will be grander if you buy and accept this product. It both promises and threatens. They play to our fears of becoming a faceless being, someone who is undesirable, and we’re threatened by that.  
 We’ve come to accept the pictures and imagination publicity conjures up, in the hope that as we consumes their products, we would one day experience the things they’ve promised. I’ve been guilty of this myself as I’ve bought things and tried things in the past that I thought would improve my life somehow, or at least entertain me a bit, but sadly, none of that has happened. I still feel empty, and there’s a hole in my wallet.
Nonetheless, Berger notes that we have reject reality; we have found it unrecognizable. Instead, it seems we’ve accepted the new reality conjured up by consumption and publicity, and for this reason, we are all mad.