He then supported these with pictures or video clips, and then used silence, and camera zooms to help the viewer ‘see’ his point of view by emphasising certain areas of painting/photograph. The structure of the program involved him making precise and deliberate points using works and phrases that were simply said but were poetical. He was immediately able to get his point across simply and with few words, and to make them memorable – in a sense he created a memorable ‘picture’ using using the simplest of tools of television in order to launch his program’s on how we see! This opening scene had additional resonance for me from an isolation perspective because not only had he isolated the head from the painting for us to focus on, but changed our focus on the original painting were our gaze was isolated to the hole in the picture. The program opens with John Berger standing next to a picture of Botticelli’s Venus and Mars, with a Stanley knife which he uses to cut out the face of Venus – in total silence – and present it to the audience as if it was a cutting from a magazine – pure genius!

Although the program is over 36 years old, it still creates a big impact today, although it would be good to get an update on where he feels things have ‘moved on’ especially with globalisation of images and social media. This blog contains my general finding taken from the program and some of the key messages that link to my main project on isolation and my chosen photographer – Ralph Gibson – (see the attached mind maps from each series). However it is the BBC version that has had the most impact both for its visual quality and the narrative – which was delivered very precisely and with the effective use of silence to help reinforce John Berger’s many points. This was one of the most influential program’s that I have seen, and I have both watched the series on Youtube and bought the book.

To view this sees on youtube use this Link Part 1,2,3 and 4 from Youtube – (My longest blog).

John berger ways of seeing bbc