Ways Of Seeing Chapter 1 Summary

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In Chapter One of John Berger’s book Ways of Seeing he discusses how what we have experienced and learned, what we know, is the determining factor for how we perceive the world. He specifically uses perception of art to exemplify his opinion. Berger believes that there is an “...always-present gap between words and seeing in a painting…”(Berger p.7). He exemplifies this idea by describing that men of the Middle Ages, who directly associate Hell with the presence of fire must have viewed fire drastically different from how men of the 20th century see it. In the next paragraph, using practically the antithesis of Hell, Berger writes how when a person in love they are left with a sense of “completeness which no words and no embrace can match”(Berger p.8), in other words: speechless. Through the use of juxtaposing examples like Hell and being in love, Berger shows the contrast of how we see art versus how we should see art. Berger thoroughly discusses how words that we learn greatly change how we interpret the meaning of a painting. He indicates that seeing and recognition are processed before words are thought of or spoken. He writes that it is seeing …show more content…
He believes that photographs also play a large role if the mystification of art. He writes that “an image is a sigh which has been recreated or reproduced... which has been detached from the place and time in which it first made it’s appearance”(Berger p.9). Berger thinks that a photograph causes a distortion of a way of seeing because the view is seeing the subject because we’re only seeing it in the way the photographer is making us see it. This holds true that photographers can manipulate certain aspects of a subject to emphasis what he or she is trying to portray. However, Berger is claiming that photos disorder our perception of history but he also says words distort perception history. If both words and photos distort the truth, then isn’t distortion
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