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For those who are behind the curtain, landmarks are no longer only geographic but also biographical and personal

John Berger

Every authentic poem contributes to the labour of poetry… to bring together what life has separated or violence has torn apart.
JOHN BERGER

Apart Authentic Contribute Labor Poem Poetry Separate Together Violence
The happiness of being envied is glamour. Being envied is a solitary form of reassurance. It depends precisely upon not sharing your experience with those who envy you.
JOHN BERGER

Being Depend Envy Experience Glamourous Happiness Illusion Precisely Reassurance Share Solitary
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.
JOHN BERGER

Average Country Men never Painting Presume Principal Protagonist Rude Spectator
Hope is a contraband passed from hand to hand and story to story.
JOHN BERGER

Contraband Hand Stories
The century of people helplessly seeing others, who were close to them, disappear over the horizon.
JOHN BERGER

Century Close Disappear Helpless Horizon Other People See
Buildings become furniture, courtyards become carpets and arrases, the streets are like galleries, the boulevards conservatories. It is a house, one or two centuries old, rich, bourgeois, distinguished. The only way of going out, or shutting the door behind you, is to leave the centre.
JOHN BERGER

Behind Bourgeois Building Conservatories Door Furniture Galleries Go House Shutting Street Way
Ethics determine choices and actions and suggest difficult priorities.
JOHN BERGER

Action Choice Determine Ethics Priorities Suggests
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
The camera relieves us of the burden of memory.
JOHN BERGER

Burden Camera Memories Photography Recieve
Pleasure and pain need to be considered together; they are inseparable. Yet the space filled by each is perhaps different. Pleasure, defined as a sense of gratification, is essential for nature
JOHN BERGER

Consider Essential Inseparable Nature Need Pain Pleasure Sense Space Together
Do you know the legend about cicadas? They say they are the souls of poets who cannot keep quiet because, when they were alive, they never wrote the poems they wanted to.
JOHN BERGER

Alive Cicadas Legend Poem Poet Quiet Soul
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.
JOHN BERGER

Capitalism Culture Dream Publicity Same Time
Art, when it functions like this, becomes a meeting-place of the invisible, the irreducible, the enduring, guts, and honor.
JOHN BERGER

Art Become Enduring Function Gut Honor Invisible Meeting Place
Tracing an imaginary line between a cluster of stars gave them an image and an identity.
JOHN BERGER

Between Cluster Gave Identity Image Imaginary Star Trace
You are observed with interest but you do not observe with interest – if you do, you will become less enviable. In this respect the envied are like bureaucrats; the more impersonal they are, the greater the illusion (for themselves and for others) of their power.
JOHN BERGER

Bureaucrat Greater Illusion Impersonal Interest Observe Others Power Themselves
Photographs bear witness to a human choice being exercised in a given situation.
JOHN BERGER

Choice Decision Given Photography Situation

For those who are behind the curtain, landmarks are no longer only geographic but also biographical and personal

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For those who are behind the curtain, landmarks are no longer only geographic but also biographical and personal

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