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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.

John Berger

No painting or drawing, however naturalist, belongs to its subject in the way that a photograph does.
JOHN BERGER

Belong Draw Naturalist Paint Photograph Subject Way
We follow songs in order to be enclosed. We find ourselves inside a message.
JOHN BERGER

Enclose Follow Inside Message Order Ourselves Song
If everything that existed were continually being photographed, every photograph would become meaningless.
JOHN BERGER

Community Everything Exist Meaningless Photograph
This is not because they are callous or personally inhuman: it is because they live in and accept a society which is incapable of knowing what a human life is worth.
JOHN BERGER

Accept Callous Human Inhuman Know Live Society Worth
Every city has a sex and an age which have nothing to do with demography. Rome is feminine. So is Odessa. London is a teenager, an urchin, and, in this, hasn’t changed since the time of Dickens. Paris, I believe, is a man in his twenties in love with an older woman.
JOHN BERGER

Age Believe City Every Nothing Sex Teenager
The contradiction in perspective was that it structured all images of reality to address a single spectator who, unlike God, could only be in one place at a time.
JOHN BERGER

Addresses Adorable Contradiction God Image Perspective Reality Really Single Spectator Structure Unlike
The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich.
JOHN BERGER

Before Century Poverty Priorities Result Scarcity Set World
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
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
Japanese art looked closely around screens; Italian Renaissance art surveyed conquered nature through the window or door-frame of a palace.
JOHN BERGER

Around Close Conquer Country Door Frame Look Place Renaissance Screen Survey Window
A peasant becomes fond of his pig and is glad to salt away its pork.
JOHN BERGER

Animal Away Become Fond Glad Peasant Pig Pigs Pork Two
The strange power of art is sometimes it can show that what people have in common is more urgent than what differentiates them. It seems to me it’s something that theatre can do, but it’s rare; it’s very rare.
JOHN BERGER

Art Common Differentiate More People Power Rare Sometimes Strange Theatre Urgent
Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.
JOHN BERGER

Aqtch Look Men Sight Vision Women
The extreme proposition on which Giacometti based all his mature work was that no reality… could ever be shared. This is why he believed it impossible for a work to be finished. This is why the content of any work is not the nature of the figure or head portrayed but the incomplete history of him staring at it.
JOHN BERGER

Bases Extreme Finishing Giacometti History Impossible Incomplete Portrayed Proposition Reality Share Staring
But toemigrate is always to dismantle the centre of the world, and so to move into a lost, disoriented one of fragments.
JOHN BERGER

Always Centre Dismantle Emigrate Fragment Lost Move World
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 BERGER

Doe Drawing Image Imitation Life Photograph Photography Rendering Subject Trace Unlike Viewer Visual

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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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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Popular Authors

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