Many painter artists were prolific in their output but not commercially very successful. If anyone doubted his social status, they needed only seek confirmation in the testimony of his “New World” family album 5. A “nice” view is captured purely for personal and aesthetic reasons, perhaps for display in the photographer’s home.īob Rogers describes how is father used to takes photographs of him alongside many items and people which echoed he life that his father never had following his flee from Nazi occupation. Landscapes are a particular instance of this. In the field of general amateur photography, images are usually made for personal use and enjoyment, with no thought to a variety of interpretations.
Each person seeing that image will see it differently, particularly in reference to detail and meaning. John Berger says “Every image embodies a way of seeing”.1 The image is the way in which the image creator has compiled the image but it is how WE see an image and what we see in that image that begins to determine our understanding of that image. That infant would not be able to describe a fork or hoe without prior knowledge of such an object, its shape, use, environment etc. It is not only our ability to select what we see in and of an object, but what our knowledge, background, education and upbringing has contributed to our understanding of such an object.įor instance, a gardening tool shown to an infant will have no meaning or recognition as to purpose when that infant has not seen anyone using such an implement. We cannot describe any object unless we have seen it, or an image of it.īut it is what we see that determines our description of it, or what we see in an image. The opening words of John Berger’s “Ways of Seeing” are “Seeing comes before words”, with the implication that the child sees and recognises before it can express what it sees in words.Īny one of us has to be able to see something before describing it in words.