Ways of Seeing
John Berger
Part 1:
Before the advent of modern camera technology, we used paintings to capture reality. Painting as a medium is quiet, stays still in time.
Perspective is what a human being can perceive through their own eyes. if our perspective has to move, we needed to move our body and eyes with it
With the introduction of the camera, we got access to a perspective that is originally not ours. for the first time, the image came to us instead of us going to them. It is the image of the painting that travels now.
With camera and photography, the subject of these paintings could be modified, narratives changed and transmitted at will.
Take a painting and focus your eyes on a specific part of the painting. The interpretation you come up with by looking at different parts of the painting could be very different from viewing the entire painting in one shot.
Hence, the original meanings of paintings and the interpretation in art books are heavily distorted based on the authors’ angle.
the camera is a technology that moves in space and time, but the painting is always the same. It does not travel in time. The best way to look at a painting is to look at it with uninterrupted silence and enjoy the striking stillness.
Because the paintings are still and do not move it time, their meaning is not attached to them. Although when they have become transmittable, they lend themselves to manipulation
The interpretation of paintings can be influenced by many factors:
- The music in the background
- what is seen before/after the painting
- words over/around it
People use this to create a sense of false mystification of art. It is as though the author doesn't want us to make sense of it on our own terms.
The image on the screen is not an interaction tool. The technology still is a one-way transmission. You can reply to a person in the video.
You see images, and the meanings are arranged. consider the arrangement but be skeptical of it.
