Ways of Seeing

The book “As We See” by the British art critic John Berger is one of the most widely read contemporary texts about art. It was written based on the BBC series of the same name and was first published in 1972 by Penguin Books.
Berger focuses on how people see works of art, and using the examples of painting and advertising, he shows that, along with the plot content, images have an ideological charge, and the means of reproduction influence our current attitude towards works of art.
The art critic proposes a thesis that art texts should not only be authoritative statements about art, but also contribute to the ability of readers to see and express themselves. In the structure of the book, this tendency is reproduced in the alternation of text and visual essays (which consist only of images). The reader looks at the image, and then reads the text. Reads and then independently examines the image. In the book’s task, this tendency is reproduced in the author’s attempt to “start asking questions.” It was important to Berger to create a book in which discussions of issues about art and technical reproduction, the female body, advertising, and oil painting would be picked up by readers and further discussed by a wide range of people: students, artists, art institutions, and other art historians.