READINGS.

    This week's core reading was chapter one of "Ways of Seeing" with John Berger. The chapter discusses the different ways that people see photographs. The chapter opens with the phrase

"Seeing comes before words. The child look and recognises before it can speak"

I feel as though this was the perfect opening to the chapter. It then goes on to look at how the way we see things in day to day life are affected by what we know or believe and that what we look at - particular objects, shapes, colours etc. is a choice, and that therefore we only see the items that are brought within our reach. It particularises the way that individuals looks at things and how we pick out objects that relate to us.

    The chapter then continues to discuss images, it claims that "an image is a sight which has been recreated or reproduced" whilst then discussing how a photographers way of seeing is usually represented in their choice of subject for a photograph.  A point I found particularly interesting was the idea that an image can outlast what it represents, that there is too much to an image for it just to be a representation - there will always be other stories and ideas behind it. 

   Berger then talks about the past and how cameras changed certain views. The camera itself completely distorted that way that men saw in general - a photograph captured meanings that were never seen to the human eye, whilst it also changed the view of paintings as they were simply a 2D representation of a moment whereas photographs always reflected a 3D sensation. He discusses the fact that a film that reproduces the images of a painting leads the spectator through the painting - looking at the hidden representations and meanings to it and the film leads the spectator to see various conclusions. 

    The piece is concluded with the idea that art of the past is completely lost, no longer existing and therefore as a results of this its authority is lost.