Archive for the ‘John Berger’ Category
Understanding a photograph
Berger, John. ‘Understanding a photograph’ Classic Essays on Photography ed. by Alan Trachtenberg (New Haven: Leete’s Island Books, 1980) 291-294 p.291 Certainly the vast majority of people do not consider photography an art, even whilst they practise, enjoy, use and value it. It now seems clear that photography deserves to be considered as though it were [...]
Filed under: Camera culture, Edited Books, Essays, Images and reality, John Berger, Observer & the Photograph, Photograph as Document, Pointing & Photography, Vernacular Photography | Leave a Comment
Perception and Knowledge
Takvan, Monica. ‘Perception and Knowledge – In Connection to the Eye and the Senses’, Photography & Culture, 3:3, 321-330 Research in Progress p.321 Perception is often connected to knowledge and information gained through the eyes, and when saying we understand something, the term “I see” is often used. Is seeing the equivalent of understanding? And is perceiving the same as [...]
Filed under: Images and reality, Invention of photography, John Berger, Monica Takvam, Photography & Culture, Photography's Materiality, Touch/Tactile Perception | Leave a Comment
Metaphor
Price, Mary. ‘Metaphor’ The Photograph: A Strange, Confined Space (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994) 134-149 pp.134-135 Before photography, according to Ivins [William M, Ivins, Jr.], the syntactical analysis of a picture preceded the handmade reproduction, which became a symbolic representation of its original. references for reproduction are the woodcut, etching, or lithograph that reproduce a [...]
Filed under: Ambiguity and Photography, Books, Criticism of Photography, Image Proliferation, Invention of photography, John Berger, Magic/Uncanny & Photography, Mary Price, Mechanical Reproduction, Memory & Photography, Time and photography, Walter Benjamin, Writing/Literature & Photography | Leave a Comment
Uses of Photography
Berger, John. ‘Uses of Photography’ About Looking (London: Bloomsbury, 2009) 52-67 [An essay for Susan Sontag, in reponse to On Photography] p.52 The speed with which the possible uses of photography were seized upon is surely an indication of photography’s profound, central applicability to industrial capitalism. It was not, however until the 20th century and the period [...]
Filed under: Books, Camera culture, Essays, Image Proliferation, Images and reality, John Berger, Memory & Photography, Narrative & Photography, Photography as Historical Witness, Vernacular Photography | Leave a Comment
Stories
Berger, John. ‘Stories’ Another Way of Telling by John Berger and Jean Mohr (Cambridge: Granta Books, 1982) 277-289 p.280 A photograph is simpler than most memories, its range more limited. Yet with the invention of photography we acquired a new means of expression more closely associated with memory than any other. Both the photograph and the [...]
Filed under: Ambiguity and Photography, Essays, Identification & Photography, John Berger, Memory & Photography, Narrative & Photography, Time and photography | Leave a Comment
Ways of Remembering
Berger, John. ‘Ways of Remembering’ The Camerawork Essays: Context and Meaning in Photography ed. by Jessica Evans (London: Rivers Oram Press, 1997) 42-51 [originally published in 1978] p.42 [After Sontag] A photograph is similar to a footprint or a deathmask. It is a trace of a set of instant appearances. The camera, like the eye, [...]
Filed under: Context and photography, Essays, John Berger, Memory & Context, Memory & Photography, Vernacular Photography | Leave a Comment
Appearances
Bergere, John. ‘Appearances’ Another Way of Telling (New York: Vintage Books, 1982) 81- p.86 A photograph arrests the flow of time in which the event photographed once existed. All photographs are off the past, yet in them an instant of the past is arrested so that, unlike a lived past, it can never lead to [...]
Filed under: Ambiguity and Photography, Essays, John Berger, Memory & Photography, Narrative & Photography, Time and photography | Leave a Comment
John Berger
“Before the invention of photography what served in its place? The obvious answer would be engravings, drawings, paintings, graphic works of one kind or another. Yet, if one doesn’t look at it from a purely technical point of view, what served the function that photography now serves…was the faculty of memory.”
Filed under: John Berger, Quotes | Leave a Comment
Tags: John Berger, Ways of Remembering
{rowan lear} findings- “Lots of barbed wire entanglements” : tiny portrait of young woman
- Children playing cricket
- Squinting boy holding dog with lead
- Woman standing in kitchen, hiding behind wooden boardImage © Craigmillar Archives Trust
- Two girls and two boys, standing beside field of cowsImage © Craigmillar Archives Trust
- Woman in dress standing by building at end of driveway
- Two prints of portrait of boy with shirt and jacket
- Young girl with hat and doll sitting on chair in garden
- Landscape with tree nursery/orchard
- Man playing on ship deck under lifeboat with woman reading
- Two (twin?) boys in matching clothes standing in field
- Young man with hat and pipe standing against corrugated metal wall
- Island from sea
- Man with hat on donkey
- People standing in archway
- Man, woman and two boys paddling in water
- Two men on side street with steps
- Two women standing with twin boys and carrying girl
- Man and three women sitting on grass under trees
- Village, trees and valley
- {writings}
- Shilpa Gupta: Someone Else 22 April 2012
- TANT 4 March 2012
- Let us tell the stories of the dead 21 January 2012
- This is a photograph 10 October 2011
- My brother’s photograph 22 April 2010
- Not my mother’s album 2 February 2010
