Another Way of Telling

by John Berger, Jean Mohr (Photography)

“There are no photographs which can be denied. All photographs have the status of fact. What is to be examined is in what way photography can and cannot give meaning to facts.” With these words, two of our most thoughtful and eloquent interrogators of the visual offer a singular meditation on the ambiguities of what is seemingly our straightforward art form.

As constructed by John Berger and the renowned Swiss photographer Jean Mohr, that theory includes images as well as words; not only analysis, but anecdote and memoir. Another Way of Telling explores the tension between the photographer and the photographed, between the picture and its viewers, between the filmed moment and the memories that it so resembles. Combining the moral vision of the critic and the practical engagement of the photographer, Berger and Moher have produced a work that expands the frontiers of criticism first charged by Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, and Susan Sontag.

Genres: Photography, Art, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Essays, Theory, Criticism

299 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

John Peter Berger was an English art critic, novelist, painter and author. His novel G. won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism Ways of Seeing, written as an accompaniment to a BBC series, is often used as a college text.

Later he was self exiled to continental Europe, living between the french Alps in summer and the suburbs of Paris in winter. Since then, his production has increased considerably, including a variety of genres, from novel to social essay, or poetry. One of the most common themes that appears on his books is the dialectics established between modernity and memory and loss,

Another of his most remarkable works has been the trilogy titled Into Their Labours, that includes the books Pig Earth (1979), Once In Europa (1983) Lilac And Flag (1990). With those books, Berger makes a meditation about the way of the peasant, that changes one poverty for another in the city. This theme is also observed in his novel King, but there his focus is more in the rural diaspora and the bitter side of the urban way of life.

Reviews

[Mendi · Rating 4 out of 5]

An amazing book about photography and what photos can tell us. The main theme is the life of peasants. It is divided into 4 parts, one of which (the third) is a series of 150 photographs, without text, that tries to tell us about an old peasant woman. The second part is an essay on photography by John Berger, the fourth a last short essay by Jean Mohr.

My favourite part was the first section of the book; a collection of photos accompanied by stories by photographer Jean Mohr. The stories he tells are incredibly tender and full of joy and amazement. He also gives us the results of an interesting experiment: he showed 10 random people 5 photographs and asked them what they thought the story was. We get to see the photographs, the people's accounts and the true story. It's very interesting to see what people come up with, and it only comes to show how different a photo can be interpreted.

If you are even the least bit interested in photography, or in what images do with us or tell us, I would recommend you read this book. It is great.

[Vampire Who Baked · Rating 5 out of 5]

Berger does what Berger always does, and he does it well, but the spectacular photo-essays by Jean Mohr are what really steal the show. Some of the most insightful commentary on photography, without any proselytisation or leading questions, and in an extremely effective format-- this book was an absolute delight!

[Farhana · Rating 1 out of 5]

গত বছর এস এম সুলতানের উপর একটা বই কিনেছিলাম, কয়েকদিন আগে সকালে বইটা পড়তে বসে একটা ছবি খুব ভালো লাগল । সুলতান তার পোষা বেড়ালদের সামনে নিয়ে বসে ভাত খাওয়ার একটা ছবি । বইটা পড়া শেষ করে শিল্পকলা একাডেমীতে ছবিমেলা IX এ গিয়ে দেখি নাসির আলী মামুনের তোলা সেই ছবিটা । It was a beautiful feeling, মাত্র কিছুক্ষণ আগে যেই ছবিটা বইতে দেখে এলাম সেটাই এখন চোখের সামনে enlarged. Like things came true out of book. I was amused.
এই বইয়ের photography ambiguity পার্ট টা ভালো লেগেছে আর থিওরিগুলা পড়লাম , - বুঝিনি :P

[MohSen · Rating 4 out of 5]

کتاب خوبی بود، ایده های جالبی بم داد...البته ترجمش یه جاهایی
اذیتم کرد، ولی متن جان برجر هم قطعا خیلی ساده فهم نبود.
گیراترین قسمتش برام که اخیرا هم خیلی درگیرش بودم راجع به ابهام عکس بود که اینطوری شروع میشه:«آنچه عکاسی را اختراعی عجیب و شگفت انگیز با نتایجی غیر قابل پیش بینی میسازد، ماهیت مواد خام اولیه آن،یعنی نور و زمان است» بعد از
، شکاف زمانی توی عکس میگه

فکر کنم ازون کتابایی باشه که اگه چند وقت دیگه دوباره برم
سراغش حرفای جدیدی برام داره

[Brett Wooley · Rating 2 out of 5]

The text written by Berger seemed overly complicated and in some cases tangential to photography itself. I don’t understand why a book of this scope need discuss the philosophy of perception, for example. It seemed what space the author had to write could have been used much more effectively if what he was trying to do was advance a theory of what photography is and what makes it unique from paintings and films. I think he is right to emphasize that photographs are essentially ambiguous, but that they paradoxically lend us certainty over a fact when combined with authoritative text. However, beyond this, Berger’s writing was to me, philosophical ego-stroking without much connection to photography.

[Graham Latham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Berger's essay on "Appearances" completely blew my mind. He talks about how visual appearances create correspondences between otherwise unrelated things, and how appearances as such constitute a kind of language. It's absolutely beautiful.

[Tucker · Rating 3 out of 5]

An exploration of the relationship between photography, expressive art, and narrative. Fascinating, but mixed. Mohr's photographs are outstanding and command one's attention. Berger's critical discussions are erudite and often lucid, but I found them uneven. The longest section of the work is a constructed fictional narrative told entirely through photographs: the photographs themselves are, again, uniformly excellent and the sequence, qua sequence, is evocative - but I didn't "get" much of a suggestion of anything I would call a narrative depiction from the photos themselves (what I got, I got from Berger and Mohr's explanation of what the narrative was supposed to be about) , and Berger's elucidatory epilogue didn't exactly change my mind. Perhaps if I spent more time with the images, I would - but in a way that kind of illustrates the point. A pure photographic "narrative" has no duration - so why is narrative unity something to which an unaccompanied photograph, or sequence of photographs, should aspire? Fascinating imagery, but less persuasive theory, IMHO.

[Henry Shih · Rating 5 out of 5]

另一種影像敘事2018-11-11

每一個動態行為，因照片變得曖昧模糊，再加上觀看者所擁有的過去與未來，彼此激烈碰撞後，產生貌似相似的連貫現象，也生出獨特具有個體性的個人意義。

[H]

What makes photography a strange invention -- with unforeseeable consequences -- is that its primary raw materials are light and time. (85)

And in life, meaning is not instantaneous. Meaning is discovered in what connects, and cannot exist without development. Without a story, without an unfolding, there is no meaning. Facts, information, do not in themselves constitute meaning. Facts can be fed into a computer and become factors in a calculation. No meaning, however, comes out fo computers, for when we give meaning to an event, that meaning is a response, not only to the known, but also to the unknown: meaning and mystery are inseparable, and neither can exist without the passing of time. (89)

Even a pure landscape breaks a continuity: that of the light and the weather. Discontinuity always produces ambiguity. (91)

Barthes, writing about photography, talked of "humanity encountering for the first time in its history messages without a code. Hence the phtoograph is not the last (improved) term of the great family of images; it corresponds to a decisive mutation of informational economics." The mutation being that photographs supply information without having a language of their own. (96)

The camera was invented in 1839. Auguse Comte was just finishing his Cours de Philosophie Positive. Positivism and the camera and sociology grew up together. What sustained them all as practices was the belief that observable quantifiable facts, recorded by scientists and experts, would one day offer man such a total knowledge about nature and society that he would be able to order them both. (99)

If no theoretical distinction has been made between the photograph as scientific evidence and the photograph as a means of communication, this has been not so much an oversight as a proposal. (100)

Public photography has remained the child of the hopes of positivism. Orphaned -- because these hopes are now dead -- it has been adopted by the opportunism of corporate capitalism. It seems likely that the denial of the innate ambiguity of the photograph is closely connected with the denial of the social function of subjectivity. (100)

Before time and history were conflated, the rate of historical change was slow enough for an individual's awareness of time passing to remain quite distinct from her or his awareness of historical change. The sequences of an individual life were surrounded by the relatively changeless, and the relatively changeless (history) was in its turn surrounded by the timeless. (106)

The principle of historical progress insisted that the elimination of all other views of history save its own was part of that progress. Superstition, embedded conservatism, so-called eternal laws, fatalism, social passivity, the fear of eternity so skilfully used by churches to intimidate, repetition and ignorance: all these had to be swept away and replaced by the proposal that man could make his own history. And indeed this did -- and does -- represent progress, in that social justice cannot be fully achieved without such an awareness of the historical possibility, and this awareness depends upon historical explanations being given.
Nevertheless a deep violence was done to subjective experience. And to argue that this is unimportant in comparison with the bjective historical possibilities created is to miss the point because, precisely, the modern anguished form of the distinction subjective/objective begins and develops with this violence. (107)

consequently the common experience of those moments which defy time is now denied by everything which surrounds them. Such moments have ceased to be like windows looking across history towards the timeless. Experiences which prompt the term for ever have now to be assumed alone and privately. Their role has been changed: instead of transcending, they isolate. The period in which photography has developed corresponds to the period in which this uniquely modern anguish has become commonplace. (108)

The private photograph is treated and valued today as if it were the materialisation of that glimpse through the window which looked across history towards that which was outside time. (108)

All cultures previous to our own treated appearances as signs addressed to the living. All was legend: all was there to be read by the eye. Appearances revealed resemblances, analogies, sympathies, antipathies, and each of these conveyed a message. The sum total of these messages explained the universe.
The Cartesian revolution overthrew the basis for any such explanation. It was no longer the relation between the look of things which mattered. What mattered was measurement and difference, rather than visual correspondences. The purely physical could no longer in itself reveal meaning, it could do so only if investigated by reason, which was the probe of the spiritual. Appearances ceased to be double-faced like the words of a dialogue. They became dense and opaque, requiring dissection.
Modern science became possible. The visible, hoewver, deprived of any ontological function, was philosophically reduced to the area of aesthetics. Aesthetics was the study of sensuous perceptions as they affected an individual's feelings. Thus, the reading of appearances became fragmented; they were no longer treated as a signifying whole. Appearances were reduced to contingency, whose meaning was purely personal.
The development may help to explain the fitfulness and erratic history of nineteenth-century and twentieth-century visual art. For the first time ever, visual art was severed from the belief that it was in the very nature of appearances to be meaningful. (115)

There is no need to disinter ancient religious and magical beliefs which held that the visible is nothing except a coded messaeg. These beliefs, being ahistorical, ignored the coincidence of the historical development of eye and brain. They also ignored the coincidence that both seeing and organic life are dependent upon light. Yet the enigma of appearances remains, whatever our historical explanations. Philosophically, ew can evade the enigma. But we cannot look away from it. (116)

Revelations do not usually come easily. Appearances are so complex that only the search which is inherent in the act of looking can draw a reading out of their underlying coherence. If, for the sake of a temporary clarification, one artifially separates appearances from vision (and we have seen that in fact this is impossible), one might say that in appearances everything that can be read is alerady there, but undifferentiated. It is the search, with its choices, which differentiates. And the seen, the revealed, is the child of both appearances and the search. (118)

It is necessary to repeat that the length of the quotation [of time through a photograph] is in no sense a temporal length. It is not time that is prolonged but meaning. (120)

The appearances of the event photographed implicate other events. It is the energy of these simultaneous connections and cross-references which enlarge the circle beyond the dimension of instantaneous information. (121)

How is it possible for appearances to "give birth" to ideas? Through their specific coherence at a given instant, they articulate a set of correspondences which provoke in the viewer a recognition of some past experiences. This recognition may remain at the level of a tacit agreement with memory, or it may become conscious. When this happens, it is formulated as an idea. (122)

The event instigates the idea. And the idea, confronting the event, urges it to go beyond itself and to represent the generalisation (what Hegel calls the abstraction) carried within the idea. (124)

When isolated, photographed gestures and expressions become either mute or caricatural. Here, however, they arenot isolated. Theyn contain and are confronted by an idea. (126)

We are far from wanting to mystify. Yet it is impossible for us to give a verbal key or storyline to this sequence of photographs. To do so would be to impose a single verbal meaning upon appearances and thus to inhibit or deny their own language. In themselves appearances are ambiguous, with multiple meanings. This is why the visual is astonishing and why memory based upon the visual, is freer than reason. (133)

Surprisingly, photographs are the opposite of films. Photographs are retrospective and are received as such: films are anticipatory. Before a photograph you search for what was there. In a cinema you wait for what is to come next. All film narratives are, in this sense, adventures: they advance, they arrive. The term flashback is an admission of the inexorable impatience of the film to move forward. (279)

Both the photograph and the remembered depend upon and equally oppose the passing of time. Both preserve moments, and propose their own form of simultaneity, in which all their images can coexist. Both stimulate, and are stimulated by, the inter-connectedness of events. Both seek instants of revelation, for it is only such instants which give full reason to their own capacity to withstand the flow of time. (280)

The dog came out of the forest is a simple statement. When that sentence is followed by The man left the door open, the possibility of a narrative has begun. If the tense of the second sentence is changed into The man had left the door open, the possibility becomes almost a promise. Every narrative propofses an agreement about the unstated but assumed connections existing between events. (284)

The essence of that childhood experience remains in the power and appeal of any story which has authority. A story is not simply an exercise in empathy. Nor is it merely a meeting-place for the protagonists, the listener and the teller. A story being told is a unique process which fuses these three categories into one. And ultimately what fuses them, within the process, are the discontinuities, the silent connections, agreed upon in common. (286)

If, despite these changes of role, there is still the fusion, the amalgam of the reflecting subject, one can still talk of a narrative form. Every kind of narrative situates its reflecting subject differently. The epic form placed it before fate, before destiny. The nineteenth century novel placed it before the individual choices to be made in the area where public and private life overlap. (The novel could not narrate the lievs of those who virtually had no choice.) The photographic narrative form places it before the task of memory: the task of continually resuming a life being lived in the world. (287)

In fact, the energy of the montage of attractions in a sequence of still photographs destroys the very notion of sequences -- the word which, up to now, I hav ebeen using for the sake of convenience. The sequence has become a field of coexistence like the field of memory. (288)

["Greg Adkins" · Rating 3 out of 5]

Re-reading (or in many cases reading for the first time) John Berger's books since his death last year, Another Way of Telling is the first one to strike me as non-essential. It's an interesting amalgam of theory and practice (the beginning of the book is a pair of essays about photography by Berger and his frequent collaborator, the photographer Jean Mohr, while the back half is mostly taken up with an extended photo-essay). Berger's later collection Understanding a Photograph includes all of the vital theoretical bits from Another Way of Telling, and much more besides, and has superseded this as his definitive book on the subject. Meanwhile, the photo-essay portion... well, it has a certain historical fascination, coming as it does from a perspective of believing that a photo-montage can be expressive rather than merely factual. These days, this is how the vast majority of photobooks are put together--subjective, non-narrative, almost poetic descriptions of feelings and place rather than documentary accounts. The thing is, though, artistic photobooks were also doing that back in 1982, when Berger's book was written, and in fact had been engaged in that kind of heavy artistry stretching back to at least the 1960's. Berger's apparent ignorance of this history strikes as a little embarrassing.

[🪞🎠 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful and insightful book on the different uses of photography and how a photo has the power to move us. If we see the painting is a translation, a photograph is a quotation, with the ability to capture a moment frozen in time that might carry multiple meanings and perspectives across time. If time is a straight line going forward, a photo is one vertical line through it, dividing the time before and after. The viewer of the photo can then fill in gaps, make assumptions, use visual affinities and visual imitation to “understand” what they are seeing and relate it to past experiences and images. This process, silent and often immediate is impossible to put into words, a realization, spiritual, invokes an emotional response.
“Memory is a field where different times coexist” (280). Our memories, past selves and loved ones and periods in history exist simultaneously, all alive at once.
Jean Mohr’s photos in this book were amazing. The photo essay was such an experience. It clearly demonstrates John Berger’s words and flipping through it slowly, I could feel the woman’s life story through the photographs. It captures the individual and goes beyond to reach the universal.
I know I will keep coming back to this. Beautiful!

[Albert Vargas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Creo que la mezcla de las reflexiones sobre las propias fotografias de un fotógrafo y un analisis sobre la teoria fotografica hace a este libro excepcional. Las vivencias y fotografias del primero, son o interesantes o divertidas; y las reflexiones del segundo proponen ideas muy interesantes como, el semilenguaje de las apariencias o la lucha contra la historia. Y como colofón, poner en practica estas ideas con la serie fotografica, les da mas fuerza a sus palabras, ya que por fuerza saca a relucir la potencia de las imagenes para generar un dialogo en uno mismo, sin decir nada mas que aquello que aparentar ser.

[Kay · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book's audience is those interested in photography so everyone else will not be interested the topic. I found this book not only be informative but inspiring since in addition to an interesting selection of black and white photos showing how people live, the book includes essays about photography and interpretation. An interesting exercise was asking a small group of people with different backgrounds/perspectives to interpret a set of photos as to what was going on. The explanations varied and quite frankly were often different from what actually was going on. This showed how we each bring our own bias to what we see and the difficulty for a picture to stand on its own. It shows the possibility for manipulation of what we see particularly since there's a perception that the camera doesn't lie. This book does briefly mention that photos have been manipulated since the invention of photography although it's true that many pictures are not. I would have liked a deeper dive into the ideas presented by Mr. Berger, who is knowledgeable of both still and video photography but was still delighted with this interesting look at photography.

[Tammam Aloudat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliantly written with beautiful photographs. This book is a mix of a photo exhibition, reflections on photography, and philosophical debate on the seeing and telling stories as a photographer. It also includes some really useful information for photographers who want their photographs to tell stories and narratives.

I liked John Berger's work before and I am now a fan of Mehr's photography as well.

[Trevor Murray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quick read over the course of a few subway rides. His writing about photography was reminiscent of the way Ansel Adams speaks about it in his books. John Berger’s book is inspiring and thought provoking. He is very frank in his writing and I particularly enjoyed how honest he was about the tension between the photographer and the subject. The selected photos are a joy to view and are made even better with berger’s anecdotes. The essay section of the book is also very good.

[Aliyar Gunes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mohr'un cektigi fotograflarla paralel anlatilari bence cok degerli. Fotografin nasil uretilebileceginden cok ilk fotograf cekme kararinin verildigi an ve yorumlanma sekillerine isik tutmaya aday dusunceler var. Fotografa ilgi duyan herkesin okumasi faydali olur. Yalniz kitabin baskisi cok kalitesiz, fotograf hakkinda ve icinde fotograflar bulunan bir kitabin daha kaliteli kagit ve baski teknigiyle basilmis olmasi beklenir.

[Jackson Peplow · Rating 5 out of 5]

Our world today is saturated with images. Photographs fill not only our scrapbooks but mediate our lives in a way John Berger couldn’t imagine. But how many of us think about what these images tell us, about what they represent in our relationship to time, history, and memory? In this age of Instagram, Berger’s profound writing about the meaning of photography to the human condition makes for essential reading.

[Elif Bekar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anlatmanın Başka Bir Biçimi çok güzel bir deneme/foto kitap karışımı. Berger ve Morr hem fotoğraf teorisi üzerine fikirlerini anlatmış hem de İsviçre Alplerinden İstanbul’a uzanan bir skalada fotoğraf öykülerini paylaşmış. Kolay okunan hafif bir kitap. Dönüp tekrar okunası bazı ağır sorgulamaları da içeriyor. Bir iş çıkışı Spotify eşliğinde kahve yudumlarken tekrar incelemeli.

[Meral · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Bazen kalbim sıkışarak çektiğim fotoğraflardan çok uzakta buluyorum kendimi insanların ıstırapla buruşmuş yüzleri, tıpkı negatifler gibi zihnimin dokusuna işleniyor. Yine de, geri oraya dönüyorum, çünkü resim çekersem yerimin oralar olduğunu biliyorum. İşin esası, tam gerçek; fotoğraf makinesinden bakarken beni kışkırtan şey de bu.” Margaret Bourke-White

[ira · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I was probably more receptive to appearances reading it for the first time in understanding a photo but it is better here . So funny that I feel so ambivalent about mohr’s work and generally about most of the art Berger loves when I am so totally swept up by the way he writes about it . Very strange and special little book . Good to think about sequencing images

[Chelsea · Rating 4 out of 5]

一切照片都充满了含混，一切照片都取自一种连续性的断裂.如果是一个公共事件，这一连续性便是历史；如果是私事，这种连续性便是人生故事.即便是一张单纯的风景照也打破连续性，那就是光线和气候的连续性.不连续性总会导致含混.但这种含混经常不是显而易见的，因为一旦照片被配上文字，它们就一起提供一种确定性的效果，甚至一种教条式的武断效果.
摄影师选择他索要拍摄的事件，这种选择可以被当作一种文化建构.建构的空间，体现在他虽没有选择加以拍摄事物的拒斥中.建构是他对眼前事件的读解

[Mar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Me encanta la forma en que sorprende las ideas que uno se forma de una imagen, las historias que se mueven a través de las fotos, y como el contexto y el carácter social puede influir tanto en la percepción.

[Estep · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're interested in photography or peasants or photographers read it. There's a fantastic photo essay. A capital E Essay. But in pictures. Very rare genre I hope to find more of.

[Sf9088 · Rating 3 out of 5]

还行 在书店摸着胖店猫翻完了。

[Alberto Espino · Rating 5 out of 5]

Increíble ampliar mi manera de ver, observar, sentir y contar.

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved some of the photo essays! Really interesting and moving and a different experience for me, looking at sequential photographs and finding different meanings

[Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

for real another way exists… didnt know

[Rogoal · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is avery a wesome.

[Dana · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Another Way of Telling” is a truly original marriage of word and image. John Berger, writer, and Jean Mohr, photographer, explore both mediums and how they work together and why we are so captivated by documentary work, which could otherwise be just snapshots. Berger uses the example of a found, anonymous portrait of a man with a horse to illustrate the “decisive” moment the photographer chose. This photograph compared to a photo by Kertesz illuminates the intuition and purpose of the photographer in implicit ways.
The book is split into various sections but it does have a linear flow and is worth reading (and looking) straight through. The first is Mohr’s exploration of going beyond the camera into what he is thinking about when he is photographing. In little vignettes Mohr converses with his subjects, random spectators and himself creating a forum for intuition and intention. I especially liked the gluttonous “What did I see?” chapter where Mohr gets to ask what people think and then explain, a kind of guessing game. I mean it wasn’t as interesting as most of the book, but I appreciated it. I know a lot photographers never get to do that or avoid it, as there is the saying, “the less a photograph tells, the better it is.”
Berger, on the other hand, is not a photographer and takes a position of, say, Barthes (Camera Lucida), ignorant of technical ability but valuable in his ability to just be a viewer and have that “objectivity”. But Berger is also a bit more youthful, uses laymen’s terms and is anecdotal in his prose, rather than analytical. He wants to know what the photographer was thinking and use their photograph as a very readable record of a moment through their eyes, whether through the emotion, the historical context, the time (light), the dress or appearance of the environment or subject. Berger discusses these aspects in depth using Andre Kertesz’s A Red Hussar Leaving, June 1919, Budapest. With this photograph a viewer learns how to read an image.
In the chapter “If each time…” Berger and Mohr present an abstract look at a peasant woman’s life. It is a poem, an essay, very much left up to the interpretations of Berger and Mohr. The result is the (almost) 100-page photo essay of what Berger and Mohr think would reflect the essence of a peasant woman’s rituals, hobbies, environment and sensibilities. It is a reaction and probing of what the definition of a photographic narrative structure is and could be. To me, their photo story, attempts to do something difficult and admirable – reflect the subjective experience. Berger and Mohr do this by including details of her knitting, the actual yarn, pages of a botanical book she might read and repetitive use of artwork (from her walls?). This book is waxing on opposition and rebellion to what we are learning is “photojournalistic”. The attempt at subjectivity, the polar opposite, to the unattainable and venerable tradition in documentary work of objectivity is, well, refreshing. Because we, as photographers, are going into these stories with only our perspective with genuine intentions of aiming for the truth we must accept subjectivity. And thus, “Another Way of Telling”.

[Wesley · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's good. I like it.

In a strange way, that seems to be about the most accurate way to sum up this book. Basically a lengthy illustrated essay, Berger lays down a theory of photography and meaning that has a timeless, universalized, and yet personal approach to it.

Berger shares his approach a bit with the reader-response crowd of literary theorists, but in a way that is more epistemological than historical.

Throughout the book, they take several key photos as context, as well as a photo essay of the life of a peasant woman. I would suggest skimming the photos first, then reading what Berger has to say before reviewing the photos again, just to see how your approach or understand of the photos changes over the course of his discussion.

He reviews what he thinks are the key elements for a good photo and goes into some philosophical detail in the explanation of these elements. He then proceeds to demonstrate this approach by using several historical photos, mostly 20th century stuff. The book concludes with the photo essay.