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​Ways of seeing by John Berger Book review/ summary

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9/26/2016
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The classic article “Ways of Seeing” By John Beger (1972), was ground breaking for his time, and examines the
manner in which men and women are depicted culturally and the consequential results these depictions have on
their posture and self as well as mutual judgment. In “Ways of Seeing” Berger claims that the representations of
men and women in visual culture attract different ‘gazes’, alternative ways in which they are looked at, with men
having the authority to examine women and, women to also examine women.

Beger states at the beginning of “Ways of Seeing” that the cultural presence of the women is still very much
different from that of the man. He claims that a man’s presence in the world I all about his potency and is related
to what he can do, power and ability. ‘A man’s presence suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you…the
presence is always towards a power which he exercises on others.’ Alternatively, Berger states a woman’s presence is
always related to itself, not the world, and she does not represent potential but rather only herself and what
cannot or can be done to her, never by her. ‘A woman’s presence expresses her own attitude to herself, and defines
what can and cannot be done to her.’ For Beger the age old notion that the woman was destined to take care of the
man is a huge source of this identity. He claims that because of this woman are constantly self-conscious, and are
always aware of her own presence in every action she performs. ‘But this has been at a cost of a woman’s self being
split into two. A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of
herself…from earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually.’ As a result of this, he
notes that herself value is measured through the manner of which she is viewed, in her own eyes, in others’ eyes
and in men’s eyes.

‘Men survey women before treating them. Consequently, how a woman appears to a man can determine how she will be
treated. ‘He claims that men survey woman before they relate to them and the results of this determine their
relation to the women. As a result all of women's actions and appearance are indications of the manner in which
she would like to be treated. That is, a woman's actions indicate the way she would like to be observed, contrary to
man's actions which are just actions. ‘Consequently how a woman appears to a man can determine how she will be
treated. To acquire some control over this process, women must contain it and interiorize it. That part of a woman’s self
which is the surveyor treats the part which is the surveyed so as to demonstrate to others how her whole self would like to
be treated.’ He continues to simplify this idea by stating that ‘men act-women appear. Men look at women. Women
watch themselves being looked at’. The surveying woman is a man, the surveyed woman is a woman, and by this the
woman objectifies herself as a subject of a gaze, this is the meaning of Berger's title "Ways of Seeing" – essentially
meaning that there are different ways of seeing man and woman.
He then goes on to analyze nude images of women in the artistic European tradition. The first depiction of a nude
woman discussed is that of Eve from the story of the Garden of Eden. He states that the nakedness or
consciousness in the story was the result of different ways in which man and woman looked at each other
following the eating of the fruit from the tree of knowledge, and the subsequent subordination of the woman to
man’s rule. Renaissance art stresses to moment of initial shame in which Adam and Eve cover themselves with fig
leaves, but Berger notes how their shame is from a third observer, not from each other. Eve's embarrassment is
retained in late secular art with the woman's awareness for the fact that she in being gazed at. And as he puts
it: ‘she is not naked for herself; she is naked as the viewer sees her.’

‘The mirror was often used as a symbol of the vanity of women. The moralizing, however, was mostly hypocritical.’ He
notes here the use of a mirror to represent women’s vanity. ‘You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed
looking at her, you put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting Vanity, thus morally condemning the woman
whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure.’

In Greek Mythology representations Paris the young man has to decide which of the gods is prettier and ‘awards
the apple to the women he finds most beautiful’, therefore adding a further element, ‘the element of
judgment’. Thus their appearance becomes a contest. He also noted that other cultures do not hold the same
attitudes towards female nudity. In other words, ways of seeing are for Berger in fact ways of subjecting, and
these differential ways of seeing/subjecting which distinguish a man's stance in the world for that of women's have
a long history in western culture and are, at least partly, the cause of gender differences which persist even in the
feminist era, because this is something much deeper than just formal equal rights.

‘The Nude Kenneth Clark maintains that to be naked is simply to be without clothes, whereas the nude is a form
art.’ Berger, differentiates between ‘naked’ or ‘nakedness’ from ‘nudity’. The nature of this relating the Berger is
what he called ‘lived sexuality’. ‘To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet
recognized for oneself. A naked has to be seen as an object in order for it to become a nude.’ Painting and photographs
which portray nudity appeal to the viewer's sexuality, the male viewer, and have nothing to do with the portrayed
woman's sexuality – women are there for men to look at, not for themselves, for man's sexuality, not their own.
‘The woman’s sexual passion needs to be minimized so that the spectator may feel that he has the monopoly of such
passion. Women are there to feed an appetite, not to have their own.’ When there is a man figure in nude painting the
woman seldom addressed him, for she is aiming at her "true lover" – the viewer, which is the central figure of the
painting without even being present in it.

In "Ways of Seeing" Berger also discusses the meaning of being naked outside of the artistic context. He argues
that in nakedness there is the relief of finding out that someone is indeed a man or a woman, and that at the
moment of being naked an element of banality comes into play and that we require this banality because it
dissolves the mystery which was present up until cloths were taken off and reality became simpler. ‘Up to that
instant the other was more or less mysterious. ’Therefore nakedness unlike representation, is for Berger a process,
not a state.

In concluding "Ways of Seeing" John Berger holds that the humanist tradition of European painting holds a
contradiction: on the one hand the painter's, owner's and viewer's individualism and on the other the object, the
woman, which is treated is abstraction. These unequal relations between men and women are, in Berger's view,
deeply assimilated in our culture and in the consciousness of women who do to themselves what men do to them
–objectify themselves.

Includes some text from:

http://culturalstudiesnow.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/john-berger-ways-of-seeing-summary-and.html
(http://culturalstudiesnow.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/john-berger-ways-of-seeing-summary-and.html)
‘Ways Of Seeing’ By John Berger (1972) ISBN 978-0-141-03579-6

WAYS OF SEEING (-rst episode) 1/4

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