Ways of Seeing by John Berger asks us to consider how our cultural and individual biases and desires influence the way we experience, encounter, and interpret images. If we are always looking at things in relation to ourselves and our life experiences, how might the images we encounter also influence the way we experience the world? The impact of the Ways of Seeing text, which first appeared as a BBC television series (1972) and then as a groundbreaking book of essays, continues to expand and take on new meaning as our relationship with images, technology, and visual communication grows ever more complex.
What images have you encountered today? How did you interact with them? How long?
Ways of Seeing was developed in the 1970’s and deals with the media of that era (such as tv shows, print ads, magazines, and newspapers). How has our world and relationship to media changed over the past 50 years? In what ways is Berger's argument still relevant today? How might it change?
How do you use images to communicate identity, tell a story, or make an argument? How do ads use images? Political groups?
How does everything we see around an image change the meaning of the original image? Can you think of a personal experience in which your surroundings, the person you were with, what was happening or who you were at the time has contributed to the meaning of an object, artwork, image or piece of music?
How many images of artworks (that are not your own) do you have in your camera photos? What images are before and after them?
Find an image of an artwork anywhere: online, in person, in a book or magazine, etc. Take a photo or screenshot of the artwork in its physical context. If you are looking at it in person, take a picture of the room. If you are looking at a page of a book, photograph the whole page. If you are looking at a website or social media, take a screenshot of the whole screen. List everything surrounding the artwork that might impact how we are understanding it.
What is an image that has impacted you, and why?
How do we use images to relate to others? To ourselves?
Find something in your phone that is so related to a personal experience that you can’t see it without thinking of that moment.
Go to a museum website and choose an image from the collection. Find a way to recontextualize the image in a way that alters its perceived meaning. Add words, collage another image into it or next to it, add a caption, etc.