Ways Of Seeing

by martisiuke

“ CHAPTER1 John Berger, Ways of Seeing

WAYS OF SEEING: CHAPTER1

Seeing

Berger starts by trying to explain the relationship between words and what we see.
He points out that seeing and recognition comes before words. It is seeing that establishes our place in the world, but we use words to explain this world. Despite this he argues there is always a distinction between what we see and what we know. The example he gives is that of us seeing the sun revolving around the earth but knowing the opposite. Having established that we see first and then use words to explain the world, i.e. what we know, he then goes on to say what we know or believe affects the way we see things. This makes it a dynamic relationship; it may start with seeing and recognition, but develops into a system in which our past experience or knowledge changes the way we see things. For example, today we would see fire differently from people in the Middle Ages who believed in the physical reality of hell.
The act of seeing is active; it is an act of choice. We see what we look at and so relate to it. We also become aware that we can be seen, and so are aware we are part of the visible world. This results in the understanding that others may see things differently. This two-way (reciprocal) nature of vision comes before dialogue.”
References: http://v5.books.elsevier.com/bookscat/samples/9780240516523/9780240516523.PDF

But as Berger said before there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. Personally, I agree with this saying, because the relation what we see and what we know is never settled. I think everything what we see, our knowledge helps us to explain it. But then and again, for example: we all might see the same photograph, but everyone would interpret in different way. Our beliefs and knowledge affects what we see.
So below I will try to explain the images the way I understand them.

Looking at Diane Arbus‘ photo ‘Identical Twins‘ shows us in a very immediate way that photography can do more than that. Diana Arbus produce image, of two the same girls, but if you look at these girls a bit longer you could notice those differences such as one pair of eyes is hooded, the other clear and open; the hands are slightly different; the hair looks slightly different as well. Also you could look at the emotion in image. One of the girls looks happy, because the smile appears in her face, but then when you look at another one, she looks quite sad and not happy at all. I think I could relate this image to nature. I think people sometimes forget that humans still have very strong connection with nature and in my opinion this image is magnificent record with shows nature of identity and how uniqueness triumphs uniformity. It seems that Diana Arbus was trying to to represent identity through this photograph. This images is black and white, but I think is quite good choice to do it in black and white, because the colours doesn’t distract viewer. So in this case in image there are two dominating colours black and white. I think in this image black and white works good together, because as you can see in images girls is wearing black dresses and white background against them helps viewers to focuses more on the main objects – girls. I think the mood in this image is quite mysterious, because one of the girl is smiling so it seems like she’s trying to connect with the audience by facial expressions and the another ones look very sad and moody. So I think there is and slight contrast between those two girls even thought that there are twins and look same. 

Julian Germain – For Every Minute You Are Angry, You Lose 60 Seconds of Happiness.
I had opportunity to look at this book, I think this book is so special, there are so emotions and feelings in it, and it’s even hard to explain it. I choose practically this image, because I would like to talk about it from my side and how I might understand it. The mood in this image for me is quite sad and very emotional, because in the blurry background you can see an old man making ready a dinner for two, but in the image he is the only person, so you could see that someone is missing in this image. The main focus in this image is one the dinner he’s making it, because the rest of the image is blurred. In the image appears very blank colours that and helps the viewer to create atmosphere.
When I looking at this image it seems that photographer tried to captured everyday life of this man and show that he’s missing the biggest part of his life – wife. And he’s trying to life live same as she would be still besides him. I think not just this image, but and whole book is special, because it shows that the most important things in life cost nothing at all.