Ways Of Seeing (series 1)

        A BAFTA award-winning BBC series with JOHN BERGER, which rapidly became regarded as one of the most influential art programmes ever made. 

        Ways of Seeing is a 1972 BBC four-part television series of 30-minute films created chiefly by writer JOHN BERGER and producer MIKE DIBB. Berger's scripts were adapted into a book of the same name. The series and book criticize traditional Western cultural aesthetics by raising questions about hidden ideologies in visual images. The series is partially a response to Kenneth Clark's Civilisation series, which represents a more traditionalist view of the Western artistic and cultural canon.

                                            

                                         

      In the first series of Ways f Seeing, the John Berger talked about the assumptions made about the European paintings which were born in 1400 and last till 1900. THE MAIN FOCUS WAS NOT THE PAINTINGS OR HOW THEY WERE PAINTED, BUT THE MAIN FOCUS WAS HOW WE SEE THEM.

      John berger saw these painting, the way no one did before. He viewed everything from a different side. The process of seeing or viewing something is less spontaneous or natural than we tend to believe. How we see things depends upon us. Our habit and convention of course.

     In the European art the perspective was used in the painting. Perspective is like the ray coming out of your eye and spreading into different directions, towards the thing we are seeing. It is like a beam of lighthouse, light traveling out and appearances travel in. This makes our eye a center. The perspective were used in the paintings as to make it close to reality (as the perspective was known as reality), and it also helps the viewer to move the eye in the painting. The rule of perspective gives the more space to the eye to travel or move easily, it helps to create the interest of the viewer instead of losing it and making the painting boring for the one seeing it.

                                            

      Human eye can only be in one place at a time. It can only see one thing at a time. It takes its world as it moves. It take its whole scene that it can view with it. As our eye moves the scene changes. So in this way, our eye is the center of the world we are seeing.

      John than talks about the invention of the camera and how it effect our seeing. Camera helps us to view things that are not in front of us. With the camera we can see the world we never visited or seen in front of us. But if we see it from other side, the camera shows us the images the way it sees them not the way we see things that are in front of us. So in this way our seeing is effect on a large scale by the invention of camera. 

                                       

       The camera can be moved easily from one place to another. It can be moved up and down, under the objects, on them and with them. It records movements one after the other in the most complex combination. With the camera, we can combine any and all points of the universe wherever we want them to be. In this way it explains the new way the world unknown to us. 

                                                 (THESE WORDS ARE FROM THE MANIFESTO WRITTEN

                                                   IN 1923 BY DZIGA VERTOV, THE RUSSIAN FILM DIRECTOR.

                                                   HE MADE A MOVIE IN 1928 CALLED " A MAN WITH A

                                                   MOVING CAMERA")

      As the invention of the camera, effected our way of seeing. It has also changed the paintings painted long ago before its invention.

       I personally agree with John Berger, their is a huge difference between the images we see from the camera and the things we see in front of us.
       Paintings, like our eye, can be in one place at a time. With the camera, the images are reproduced and are available in any size required, all over the world, for different purposes. For example, I see paint a women. The original one is hanged in a room. It can only be viewed by visiting that place where I hanged the original masterpiece. 

        We can see images and paintings, their messages and details on our screens on different places. I m seeing an image sitting in my room. It can be viewed by thousand other people at the same time, on thousand different places on their screens. Although the environment and surroundings can not be same. We view things according to us and our environments or surroundings.

                                              

         Here i want to explain it with the example. If I hang a painting of a woman with the children in my room, it will give a different meaning to the viewer as it is effected by the surroundings. But if the same painting is hanged in a church or any other place, it will give a totally different meaning to the viewer as the place where it is hanged effect its existence and gives a different meaning to it. 

         In the same way if we select some specific portion from a painting and reproduces it. It will totally change the meaning, sense and purpose of that painted portion. 

                                           

        In the above painting if we crop the woman on the right, looking downwards. Then it will change the whole meaning of the painting. It will be seen as she is thinking something or she is sad, or maybe she is just looking downward in grief.