Quotes from book
Ways of Seeing

Name: Ways of Seeing
Author: John Berger

Ways of Seeing is a 1972 television series of 30-minute films created chiefly by writer John Berger and producer Mike Dibb. It was broadcast on BBC Two in January 1972 and adapted into a book of the same name.

“The uniqueness of every painting was once part of the uniqueness of the place where it resided.”

John Berger book Ways of Seeing

Chap. 1
Ways of Seeing (1972)

“All publicity works upon anxiety.”

John Berger book Ways of Seeing

Source: Ways of Seeing

“History always constitutes the relation between a present and its past. Consequently fear of the present leads to mystification of the past”

John Berger book Ways of Seeing

Source: Ways of Seeing

“When in love, the sight of the beloved has a completeness which no words and no embrace can match: a completeness which only the act of making love can temporarily accommodate”

John Berger book Ways of Seeing

Source: Ways of Seeing

“Glamour cannot exist without personal social envy being a common and widespread emotion.”

John Berger book Ways of Seeing

Source: Ways of Seeing (1972), p. 148

“To remain innocent may also be. to remain ignorant.”

John Berger book Ways of Seeing

Source: Ways of Seeing

“A man's presence suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you. By contrast, a woman's presence… defines what can and cannot be done to her.”

John Berger book Ways of Seeing

Source: Ways of Seeing (1972)
Context: According to usage and conventions which are at last being questioned but have by no means been overcome, the social presence of a woman is different in kind from that of a man... A man's presence suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you... By contrast, a woman's presence expresses her own attitude to herself, and defines what can and cannot be done to her. (p. 45-46)

“You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting “Vanity,” thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for you own pleasure.”

John Berger book Ways of Seeing

Source: Ways of Seeing

“The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. Each evening we see the sun set. We know that the earth is turning away from it. Yet the knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight.”

John Berger book Ways of Seeing

Source: Ways of Seeing (1972)

“To be naked is to be oneself.
To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognised for oneself.”

John Berger book Ways of Seeing

Source: Ways of Seeing

“Publicity is usually explained and justified as a competitive medium which ultimately benefits the public (the consumer) and the most efficient manufacturers - and thus the national economy. It is closely related to certain ideas about freedom: freedom of choice for the purchaser: freedom of enterprise for the manufacturer. The great hoardings and the publicity neons of the cities of capitalism are the immediate visible sign of "The Free World." For many in Eastern Europe such images in the West sum up what they in the East lack. Publicity, it is thought, offers a free choice.”

John Berger book Ways of Seeing

Source: Ways of Seeing (1972), p. 130