Viewfinders: Ways of Seeing at 50

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Viewfinders: Ways of Seeing at 50: Geoff Dyer - A Photograph by Robert Capa

Geoff Dyer - A Photograph by Robert Capa

BBC Radio 4 - Viewfinders: Ways of Seeing at 50, Geoff Dyer - A Photograph by Robert Capa

Five writers on looking at art, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Ways of Seeing.

Five writers on looking at art, to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Ways of Seeing - the 1972 TV series presented by John Berger, which was turned into a best-selling book.

First broadcast in 1972 on BBC Two, Ways of Seeing was a collaboration between the writer John Berger and director Mike Dibb. Across a series of four half-hour episodes, Berger talked about how we look at art, and why it matters: "The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled ... The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe ... Every image embodies a way of seeing. Even a photograph ... Our perception or appreciation of an image depends also upon our own way of seeing". The programmes explored Walter Benjamin's ideas about the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction; the female nude and the male gaze; oil painting, status and ownership; advertising, art and commerce. The book published to accompany the series has never been out of print and has had a profound influence on popular understanding of art criticism and visual culture. 

To mark the fiftieth anniversary of Ways of Seeing, Radio 4 invites five writers to tell us about an image that is important to them, and to reflect on how Ways of Seeing influenced their own ways of looking at - and thinking about - art. 

To begin the week, Geoff Dyer chooses a picture by Robert Capa - "I will never love another photograph more" - and remembers his first encounter with Ways of Seeing: "It’s customary to talk about the way that Ways of Seeing opened our eyes, made us see art, paintings and photographs in new ways. And that’s true. It was a revelation. Ways of Seeing, I remember, made boring old paintings of men in ruffs look interesting. And it wasn’t just the paintings. The presenter looked interesting too. Interviewed about his reactions to first seeing the series, the Canadian novelist Michael Ondaatje said he’d never seen anything like… that shirt: Berger’s shirt, as he stepped up and, looking like a first division footballer out for a night on the town, cut a piece out of a sacred art work or grabbed us by the lapels with the seductive and polemical intensity of his gaze."

Geoff Dyer is the author of four novels and nine non-fiction books, most recently See/Saw: Looking at Photographs. He is the author of a critical study of John Berger, Ways of Telling, and is the editor of John Berger: Selected Essays. He currently lives in Los Angeles where he is Writer in Residence at the University of Southern California.

John Berger was a storyteller, a novelist, a painter, a poet, a critic, a screenwriter, a playwright. He died in 2017, at the age of 90.

Produced by Mair Bosworth for BBC Audio

Image © Robert Capa/International Center of Photography/Magnum Photos by kind permission of Magnum Photos

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Five writers on looking at pictures, in celebration of John Berger's 1972 TV series.

Five writers talk about looking at pictures, to mark the 50th anniversary of Ways of Seeing - the 1972 TV series presented by John Berger and its accompanying book.

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Geoff Dyer - A Photograph by Robert Capa

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