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Yet nowherein a zoo can a stranger encounter the look of an animal. At the most, the animal’s gaze flickers and passes on. They look sideways. They look blindly beyond.

John Berger

The past is the one thing we are not prisoners of. We can do with the past exactly what we wish. What we can’t do is to change its consequences.
JOHN BERGER

Consequences Exactly Past Prisoner Wish
Hope is a contraband passed from hand to hand and story to story.
JOHN BERGER

Contraband Hand Stories
What makes photography a strange invention is that its primary raw materials are light and time.
JOHN BERGER

Inspirational Light Material Photography Primary
If the public photograph contributes to a memory, it is to the memory of an unknowable and total stranger.
JOHN BERGER

Contribute Memories Photograph Stranger Unknowable
One can say of language that it is potentially the only human home, the only dwelling place that cannot be hostile to man.
JOHN BERGER

Dwelling Home Hostile Language Men Place Potentially
Fanaticism comes from any form of chosen blindness accompanying the pursuit of a single dogma.
JOHN BERGER

Blindness Chosen Come Dogma Fantacism Form Pursuit
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
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
Oil painting did to appearances what capital did to social relations. It reduced everything to the equality of objects.
JOHN BERGER

Appearance Capital Equality Everything Object Oil Painting Reduce Relation Social
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
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
Everything became exchangeable because everything became a commodity.
JOHN BERGER

Become Commodity Everything Exchangeable
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
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
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
Today the discredit of words is very great.
JOHN BERGER

Discredit Great Hijacking Today Word

Yet nowherein a zoo can a stranger encounter the look of an animal. At the most, the animal’s gaze flickers and passes on. They look sideways. They look blindly beyond.

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Yet nowherein a zoo can a stranger encounter the look of an animal. At the most, the animal’s gaze flickers and passes on. They look sideways. They look blindly beyond.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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