The Ways of Seeing (Edit)

This essay after re-reading it definitly depicted and showed me how we see and interpret are and photography in our modern day life.

"The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe." This is very ture because we everyone sees something differently than someone else does based on the filters they have. Filters meaning; married or not, have kids or don't, gone to war or you haven't. With these experiences in our lives they can change our perception of what we see.

"When in love, the sight of the beloved has a completeness which no words and no embrace can match: a completeness which only the act of making love can temporarily accommodate." I don't really understand where this fits into his essay but it is a great quote, I don't think we really understand sex now-a-days anyways, brings everything back to square one.

"We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves." This kind of brings it back to the first quote that Berger says but when we look at art we're diving into the past, we're looking out how we've changed and how we're different than our ancestors were.

Berger talks about how suttle things can also change our perception of what we see, his example bassed on Van Gough's Crows in a Wheatfield and how just changing the title of it can change how you look at the painting. But major things can change the meaning aswell such as the invention of the still camera and the motion camera. He exclaims that the spectator use to visit the art but now with those inventions the art is visiting them, now everyone can experience the majestic aw of classical art, but if one were to physically see one there comes a deeper meaning of it. Overall at first it seems like Berger is complaining about how art has changed but in the very last paragraph he seems content with the idea of art losing it's meaning based on mass production/advertising, camers, video camers, because he'd rather everyone experience it than just a select few.

Woman in Bed

He explains how it's night time in the painting of Hendrickje but you could also see it as the morning. You can look at as if it's a painting of the morning, instead of him approaching he's waking for the day. Hendrickje opens the curtains of the bed to see him leave as she is just about to get up. That is the difference with art, I'm probably completely wrong but we all see things differently.

The Calling of St. Matthew

It's interesting that somethings you do show who you are, Caravaggio showed his fears in his paintings. I don't know how the window can be threatening, I think he just wanted on seers to look at what we really going on in the painting, the looks exchanged, the fear that was felt, the greed in the room.