Unlike any other visual image, a photograph is not a rendering, an imitation or an interpretation of its subject, but actually a trace of it.
JOHN BERGEREvery authentic poem contributes to the labour of poetry… to bring together what life has separated or violence has torn apart.
More John Berger Quotes
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Traditional Chinese art looked at the Earth from a Confucian mountain top;
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Picasso drawings are like that… the Rembrandts are like that. The artist who most often did that was Van Gogh.
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Publicity is the life of this culture – in so far as without publicity capitalism could not survive – and at the same time publicity is its dream.
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You cant draw it for others. You can try, of course, but it doesn’t work. People obeying rules laid down my somebody else is not the same thing as respecting life. And if you want to respect life, you have to draw a line.
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Glamour cannot exist without personal social envy being a common and widespread emotion.
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Autobiography begins with a sense of being alone. It is an orphan form.
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I can’t tell you what art does and how it does it, but I know that often art has judged the judges, pleaded revenge to the innocent and shown to the future what the past suffered, so that it has never been forgotten.
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Drawing is a way of coming upon the connection between things, just like metaphor in poetry reconnects what has become separated.
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The publicity image steals her love of herself as she is, and offers it back to her for the price of the product.
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In the average European oil painting of the nude the principal protagonist is never painted. He is the spectator in front of the picture and he is presumed to be a man.
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A cigarette is a breathing space. It makes a parenthesis.
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Whenever the intensity of looking reaches a certain degree, one becomes aware of an equally intense energy coming towards one through the appearance of whatever it is one is scrutinizing.
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Protest and anger practically always derives from hope, and the shouting out against injustice is always in the hope of those injustices being somewhat corrected and a little more justice established.
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Every authentic poem contributes to the labour of poetry… to bring together what life has separated or violence has torn apart.
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The camera relieves us of the burden of memory.
JOHN BERGER