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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

It is not usually possible in a poem or a story to make the relationship between particular and universal fully explicit. Those who try to do so end up writing parables.
JOHN BERGER

Between Explicit Fully Make Relationship Stories Trying Universal Usually Writing
My heart born naked was swaddled in lullabies.
JOHN BERGER

Born Clothes Heart Lullabies Swaddled Year
It dreams, like a dog in its basket, of hares in the open.
JOHN BERGER

Basket Dog Dream Haire Like Open
Common-sense is part of the home-made ideology of those who have been deprived of fundamental learning, of those who have been kept ignorant.
JOHN BERGER

Common Common Sense Deprive Fundamental Home Ideology Ignorant Learning Part Sense
We can become anything. That is why injustice is impossible here. There may be the accident of birth, there is no accident of death. Nothing forces us to remain what we were.
JOHN BERGER

Accident Anything Birth Impossible Injustice May Nothing Remain
In the modern world, in which thousands of people are dying every hour as a consequence of politics, no writing anywhere can begin to be credible unless it is informed by political awareness and principles.
JOHN BERGER

Anywhere Consequences Every Hour Modern People Political Politics Thousand Writing
Post-modernism has cut off the present from all futures. The daily media add to this by cutting off the past. Which means that critical opinion is often orphaned in the present.
JOHN BERGER

Add All Cutting Daily Future Mean Media Modernism Past Presently
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
This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves.
JOHN BERGER

Determine Effection Men Most Only Relation Relationship Themselves Wome
Those who first invented and then named the constellations were storytellers.
JOHN BERGER

Constellation First Invented Named Night Sky Star Storyteller
History always constitutes the relation between a present and its past. Consequently fear of the present leads to mystification of the past
JOHN BERGER

Always Constitute History Past Present Relation
The time of a cigarette is a parenthesis, and if it is shared, you are both in that parenthesis. Its like a proscenium arch for a dialogue.
JOHN BERGER

Cigarette Dialogue Noth Parentless Proscenium Shar Time
The animal has secrets which, unlike the secrets of caves, mountains, seas are specifically addressed to man.
JOHN BERGER

Address Animal Cave Man Men Mountain Sea Secret Specifically Unlike
For the artist, drawing is discovery. And that is not just a slick phrase; it is quite literally true.
JOHN BERGER

Artist Discovery Drawing Literally Phrase Slick True
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
She is meant to imagine herself transformed by the product into an object of envy for others, an envy which will then justify her loving herself.
JOHN BERGER

Envy Herself Imagine Justify Loving Menat Object Other Product Transform

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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