Art and Exploitation: John Berger's 'Ways of Seeing' at 40

All day event at the National Gallery looking back at the 1972 television series by John Berger “Ways of Seeing” which revolutionised how we view images.

The day consisted of sessions where one of the programmes was screened followed but a response to it by a speaker.

The first programme was followed by a fascinating discussion with the director Mike Dibb and the editor of the book which accompanied the series Richard Hollis. It was interesting to hear about the mechanics of the work.

Responses to the other programmes came from art historians Griselda Pollock and Michael Rosenthal, Director of the National Gallery, Nicholas Penny, and director of exhibitions at the Haunch of Venison gallery, Ben Tufnell.

It was a fascinating and stimulating day but I did come away not that impressed by the programmes. I don’t remember them from the time so was not influenced by them then. With hindsight I am sure they changed a lot of things but I think they were so long ago that we may have seen the backlash to them as well.

I felt at times Berger held the pictures up to blame them for the times they reflected rather than treating them as objects of their time. For example if a picture does not represent a modern woman’s view of life and her body that is the fault of the times in which the picture was painted not the picture itself. I was fascinated by the first programme looking at how how we view objects changed with photography and an ease of reproducing an image but the others I was not convinced by! 

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