The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object – and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.
JOHN BERGERThe surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object – and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.
JOHN BERGERNo painting or drawing, however naturalist, belongs to its subject in the way that a photograph does.
JOHN BERGERCompassion opposes this order and is therefore best thought of as being in some way supernatural.
JOHN BERGERThe true content of a photograph is invisible, for it derives from a play, not with form, but with time.
JOHN BERGEREvery 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 BERGERA drawing is an autobiographical record of one’s discovery of an event – either seen, remembered or imagined. A ‘finished’ work is an attempt to construct an event in itself.
JOHN BERGERWe 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 BERGERA peasant becomes fond of his pig and is glad to salt away its pork.
JOHN BERGERMy heart born naked was swaddled in lullabies.
JOHN BERGERA 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 BERGERTo 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 BERGERThe existence of pleasure is the first mystery. The existence of pain has prompted far more philosophical speculation.
JOHN BERGERPhotography, because it stops the flow of life, is always flirting with death.
JOHN BERGERDo 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 BERGERParis, I believe, is a man in his twenties in love with an older woman.
JOHN BERGERIn 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