black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

These contradictions both hide and increase the natural ambiguity of the photographic image.

John Berger

The impulse to paint comes neither from observation nor from the soul (which is probably blind) but from an encounter: the encounter between painter and model: even if the model is a mountain or a shelf of empty medicine bottles.
JOHN BERGER

Blind Bottle Come Encounter Impulse Medicine Mountain Observation Soul
The zoo cannot but disappoint. The public purpose of zoos is to offer visitors the opportunity of looking at animals.
JOHN BERGER

Animal Look Offer Opportunity Public Purpose Visitor Zoos
Your lips, beloved, are like a honeycomb: honey and milk are under the tongue. And the smell of your clothes is like the smell of my home.
JOHN BERGER

Beloved Clothes Home Honeycomb Like Lip Milk Smell Tongue
To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself. A naked body has to be seen as an object in order to become a nude.
JOHN BERGER

Naked Oneness Oneself Order Other Recognize Sight
Between the experience of living a normal life at this moment on the planet and the public narratives being offered to give a sense to that life, the empty space, the gap, is enormous.
JOHN BERGER

Experience Give Giving Moment Narrative Normal Offer Planet Public Sense Space
This was once achieved by extensive deprivation. Today in the developed countries it is being achieved by imposing a false standard of what is and what is not desirable.
JOHN BERGER

Achieve Country Deprivation Desirable Develop False Impose Intensive Standard Today
The past grows gradually around one, like a placenta for dying.
JOHN BERGER

Around Die Dying Gradually Grow One Past Placenta
When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls.
JOHN BERGER

Book Cover Four Inhabit Reading Roof Wall
Paintings record what the painter remembers. Because each one of us forgets different things, a photo more than a painting may change its meaning according to who is looking at it.
JOHN BERGER

Different Forget Look Meaning Pain Remember Thing
Advertising is not merely an assembly of competing messages; it is a language itself which is always being used to make the same general proposal
JOHN BERGER

Advertising Assembly Being Competing Language Merely Message Messages Same Use
A photograph is a result of the photographer’s decision that it is worth recording that this particular event or this particular object has been seen. If everything that existed were continually being photographed, every photograph would become meaningless.
JOHN BERGER

Everything Meamimgless Object Particular Photograph Recording Result
You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting “Vanity,” thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for you own pleasure.
JOHN BERGER

Enjoy Hand Look Mirror Morally Naked Paint Painting Pleasure Vanity Women
We follow songs in order to be enclosed. We find ourselves inside a message.
JOHN BERGER

Enclose Follow Inside Message Order Ourselves Song
The human imagination… has great difficulty in living strictly within the confines of a materialist practice or philosophy.
JOHN BERGER

Confine Difficulty Dog Dream Human Imagination Live Materialist Philosophy Practice Strict
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.
JOHN BERGER

Art Can Forgotten Innocent Judge Know Past Revenge Show
My heart born naked was swaddled in lullabies.
JOHN BERGER

Born Clothes Heart Lullabies Swaddled Year

These contradictions both hide and increase the natural ambiguity of the photographic image.

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These contradictions both hide and increase the natural ambiguity of the photographic image.

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Popular Authors

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