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Ways of Seeing
1972 · TV series · documentary · 1 season
Created by John Berger
John Berger's Ways of Seeing changed the way people think about painting and art criticism. This watershed work shows, through word and image, how what we see is always influenced by a whole host of assumptions concerning the nature of beauty, truth, civilization, form, taste, class and gender. Exploring the layers of meaning within oil paintings, photographs and graphic art, Berger argues that when we see, we are not just looking - we are reading the language of images.
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8 comments on Hacker News
Also of interest on this topic is the episode "The Politics of Possession" from the series "Ways of Seeing."
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Z7wi8jd7aC4
Twas always thus, and is beautifully described by John Berger in his book nd tv series Ways of Seeing. In, I think, 1974? Well worth your youtube time.
I am reading The Structures of Everyday Life: Civilization and Capitalism Vol. 1 by Fernand Braudel right now and I'd say it is doing this. It sounds boring but it is incredibly fascinating - pages and pages on what people ate, drank, lived in, slept in, how they spent their days etc in the transition from feudal to industrial society and how subtle patterns of weather, technology, etc caused large events in history. It's well written, too.
Also: 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei by Eliot Weinberger
A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander
Impro by Keith Johnstone (you don't need to care about theatre or improv to enjoy this book)
Ways of Seeing by John Berger (or just watch the TV show)
My favourite one is John Berger / Ways of Seeing. It's available on youtube [0]. If you enjoy photography you might enjoying this documentary as well. I think it's very much related to the recent topic https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32794757
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pDE4VX_9Kk
The Queen of Trees doco is great, I wrote about and linked to it recently here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29792509
Scott Noble makes truly excellent and important political documentaries, all linked to free from his site https://metanoia-films.org/
Satyamev Jayate is an amazing documentary/talk show series with Indian star Aamir Khan, each episode looking at an important and troubling social issue. Almost every episode is now available with english subtitles on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=satyamev+jayate+subtitled
John Berger's Ways of Seeing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utEoRdSL1jo
Sapolsky's Biology of Human Behavior course. 11+ million views! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA&list=PL848F2368C90DDC3D
I can highly recommend John Berger's legendary documentary series Ways Of Seeing. The first episode explores precisely this issue - how our perception of painting is affected by reproduction. It has perhaps the most arresting opening scene of any documentary series.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pDE4VX_9Kk
"Ways of Seeing" was also made into a short BBC television series.
A few years ago, Lorna Mills gathered a number of contemporary artists and remade the series as "Ways of Something", with each artist contributing a minute of material to accompany the audio by John Berger
https://vimeo.com/105731173
Allow me to recommend the 1972 documentary series "Ways of Seeing" by John Berger. It is an astonishingly prescient examination of our changing visual culture.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pDE4VX_9Kk&list=PLlhSx0L1hpaGKfq1qXe1vWUhG1EgIN9Yf