Photo: Jean Mohr
I can still remember reading John Berger’s “Ways of Seeing” and the way it hit me. Finally someone had the nerve to call out the West for their convulsive narcissism that begins with the self-centered eye of sight. Oh but he did it with such style and grace, with an eloquent finesse that allowed him to subvert centuries of academic self-importance masquerading as truth. Take that Kenneth Clark! Your “Civilisation” has been anything but.
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Berger was the first person to show me (in school, no less) that history could be rewritten to fill in the blanks, to right the wrongs, or just to tear the whole thing down and start fresh. I’d read his books with a pleasure I never found anywhere in academic life; he was smart enough to make his ideas accessible to regular folk who had a penchant for contemplating the structures and functions of the visible world. And not just the world of art, but the very nature of looking. Somewhere in the back of my head, John Berger implanted the idea: writing could be the perfect marriage of poetry and philosophy. What a glorious legacy!
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Rest in Peace ~*~