Ways of Seeing

John Berger in his chapter “Ways of Seeing” looks at different ways of seeing, and how what we see helps us to interpret different things. He shows how seeing comes before words. The images are the things that help us interpret culture. One aspect in the chapter that really stuck out to me was when he discussed how the camera changed people’s view of the centre of the world.

Instead of a painting being unique for where it resided and it could never been seen at more than one location, the camera changed this and made everything reproducible. Berger says in regards to this reproduction of the painting that, “as a result its meaning changes. Or, more exactly, its meaning multiplies and fragments into many meanings.” I found this statement interesting because copies of paintings do seem to downsize the original uniqueness of the painting and make it seem less important because we’ve seen it a billion times in copies. Berger goes on to say that another effect of the camera being able to reproduce is that “the meaning of the original work no longer lies in what it uniquely says but in what it uniquely is.” Today he says that the value is defined in the rarity and what profit it holds. The meaning is lost because the market value overrides everything else.

In conclusion, I think Berger makes a good point when he discusses the abilities for culture today to reproduce famous pieces of art and that they have lost a lot of their uniqueness and meaning. I found this chapter interesting and it made me think about a lot of things and just how I have become desensitized to the great meanings of famous artwork. I do tend to see them as a piece of property that is worth a lot of money rather than viewing them for their uniqueness and depth of meaning because I see replications of them everywhere.