CR4_Berger, Ways of seeing_chapt 1

Chapter one, Ways of Seeing, is about how we see things before we can talk about them with words.  ‘Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak’. The idea behind this is that the visual world is what creates the world that we describe with words. The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe. 

Berger goes deeper into this concept and describes how photography is not ‘a mechanical record’. The photographer's ways of seeing is reflected in his choice of subject. So we see the subject of the photograph through the photographer’s point of view. Berger points out that images eventually outlast what they depict therefore they represent ‘how the subject had once been seen by other people’.  Berger also says that our view of something is coloured by our experiences and education. Because of this we judge art by our understanding of:

                ‘Beauty
                 Trust
                 Genius
                 Civilization
                 Form
                 Status
                 Taste, etc.’ 

In ways of seeing, Burger gives some examples to help him illustrated his point. When we view a painting we do not always see what the painter intended for us to see. Berger gives an example of Vincent Van Gogh’s ‘Wheatfield with Crows’. When we view this painting we think of sun, a farmers harvest. Then he informs us that it ‘is the last picture that Van Gogh painted before he killed himself.’  This ultimately changes our point of view of the painting. However,  What means by Burger is that if we are looking at a painting or an image. The way we perceive an image is really based on the prior relationship with whatever knowledge, or perhaps lack of knowledge we have with a topic or background regarding the image. We know that we are visible to other people and things because the way our eyes meet, and almost lock together, even if it is only for a short amount of time, that sends a signal to our brain, so that we know that we are seen by other living things.

In relation to my project, if I want to show the ideology and better life, I can use some significant to represent it, the photographic objects can be the show window.