In “ways of seeing” by John Berger, Berger said that we cannot perceive the same when we are watching a picture by a camera than when we go to a museum or church to see it. We cannot compare the feeling of what the painter want to transmit us by their work than what we can see through a video camera.

Even when a camera is a good invention that allow us to know places without traveling, it is not the same to know them in person. The feeling and reactions are different. For example when  I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET) I could realize that most of the exhibitions were in the same mood, and this allowed me to saw the paintings in a different perspective than when I google it at my phone.

Another clear example of this are the social media, when we visit a profile of a person we see what she/he want to show to us, this mean that we cannot know for real the person that is using it. It can be fake or it can be only appearances. That is why i choose this tool to explain why social network are also a brief view of the reality of the person.

In this picture I can see a beautiful model, that travel a lot, always happy, with a lot of friends, she always seem to  like what she is doing.

In another hand, I dont know her, this is just my perspective about what can I see in her profile.Maybe people will think the opposite of me,  but that is how it works, one picture can bring different points of view.

Blog Post #1

A couple of months ago, I found a page related to children around the world while I was scrolling through my Facebook account. I saw a picture of an African kid who was starving to death. He was so skinny that his bones were clearly visible. He was sticking out his hand hoping to receive some food. His condition was so miserable that I couldn’t stop tears from coming down my cheeks. I felt so sad with the cruel reality. It left me with a thought that there are so many people around the world who waste food knowingly. On the other hand, there are thousands of kids in other parts of the world who are starving to death. I have many pages in my Facebook that post about food. I think that is why I immediately thought the child needed food. He also had no clothes or shoes. I am not sure if he even has any shelter. But because of all the food posts on my Facebook, my immediate thoughts were regarding his hunger.

In high school we went to the MET a lot. We were learning about world religions. The Burning of Sodom was one of the paintings we were going to see. I looked at it online on google images so I can get an idea of the painting and what we were going to be looking at. When I saw it, I didn’t see a lot of details on the picture or knew any information about it. I didn’t see no fire I assumed the painting was dark because it was old and the colors were washed out. The only thing that caught my attention was a man and his three daughters fleeing from someone or something. I didn’t know the reason why Sodom was burning. Then I saw the painting in person I notice how big it was and the details were more clear. The sky so dark and grey, the angel in the sky throwing fire, and one of the angel leading Lot and his two daughters away from everything that was happening in Sodom. That’s when I learn about Sodom and why the Angel was burning it. It’s better to understand a painting when you’re looking at it up close than just seeing a picture online. You can learn so much. 

Camera is one of the useful tools which transfers us our images no matter the distance. Today with the help of  the images we can infer about what is happening around us or what happened before us and etc. Those images can influence our feelings and actions. In our regular life we take  many pictures on our phones to memorize them. So that looking at them we can remember pieces of our past life. In my case I have plenty of my kids’ pictures and each time when I look at them I travel back to those beautiful lovely days when my kids were babies. Those kinds of pictures give me a feeling of love, motivation and pushes me to do more accomplishment. If we look generally to the images, nowadays social media have worldwide tremendous impact to people. When people post some pictures, those pictures spread in several minutes all around the world. For the last several years people have started to post images of plastic materials which pollute the environment. People who had never thought about this problem before, started to think and worry about our world. In this way I think images have a big impact on people because it is a sort of message to the world. Sometimes we can not see some things but when we look at them from a different angle (in this case on the images) and then we can notice and realize the seriousness of the problem, the hidden message, love, feelings and many more things. 

Camera has added a great value to our lives because first of all, it makes us collect our special moments, and also it educates us about history and elaborates historic images’ details and that’s really important for viewers. Every image tells a story about itself, so they are a kind of languages especially painting image which is really hard to understand because when you see a painting image, you may visualize something that it might not be true and that’s really interesting. For example, I saw a series of paintings images from the Middle Ages. The majority of them are religious paintings which show that people were really faithful at that period of time. There are a lot of Mary and Jesus Christ paintings. In addition, there were statues of churches whose makers are not known. They didn’t put their names on them and this is a proof of their strong faith.

Goldsmith in his Shop

Furthermore, there is a painting called “A Goldsmith in his Shop” which exists right now in the MET museum. It indicates rich people in the Middle Ages which tells me that not all people at that time were farmers and priests. There were people who wore high-end clothes and lived in cities. In the painting, there is a man seems like he is a jeweler, and there are a man and a woman with him dressed upscale. Also, there is a mirror on the table which shows the buildings of the city.

Binta Ngom

John Berger emphasizes how seeing comes before words. In his book “Ways of Seeing” he says “We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves”. We all feel a certain connection when we can relate to a message that someone else put out there. Giving us reassurance that we’re not alone. Images are used to as an artistic platform to bring awareness or send a message to the viewer. Thus making it a kind of language that can speak louder to us than most words can. Words are set in stone and super specific, but with a photograph, picture or illustration multiple interpretations can surface. Everyone has their own unique perspective, which can in some ways be more powerful. 

The photo below spoke to me because of the way I can automatically relate to it. In one way, I see it as an illustration of a woman looking in the mirror at her younger self, viewing her innocence and noticing how it has changed into who she is now. She looks like she’s been through a lot of pain and has given up, envying her younger self who hasn’t seen any of it yet. Sometimes I too wish I could go back in time to relive the easier life I had before  I had all these adult responsibilities. Although I don’t do drugs or self harm, she clearly has been doing in the illustration, she’s showing pain, which we all can relate to.

  After the invention of the camera, images have become a source of information and also some kind of language that works by manipulating the context in which the images are shown. An example could be when we’re watching tv and in between commercial breaks the broadcaster often shows ads to either promote a product or service or to convey a message, while watching the news I often see ads about the newest Iphone, these ads consist of various images and videos of the new device showing and providing information meticulously picked by the company Apple to try and incite its viewers to buy the new device, while doing these ads Apple is trying to convince its public about the device’s advantages and improvements, only showing what’s beneficial for the company and therefore manipulating the way they show only what they want you to see about their new device . This type of publicity fits with the ideas that Berger describes in episode one(#1) of ways of seeing, because in the episode Berger claims that images are often shown by the provide in ways which he could manipulate what he wants people to see and could be used to create some sort of manipulative pattern that could be used to make the viewer believe or change their perspective on a certain topic.