John Berger 'Ways of Seeing' for A-level Art students. Image or Relic or photo. Naked or Nude

Looking at briefly two chapters of the famous John Berger book ’ Ways of Seeing’ It is difficult to summarise a book of such a wealth of knowledge and such a clever way of phrasing ideas.

The slide presentation gives one a sketch of two chapters. Chapter one which discusses the image versus the photo, seeing versus words and there are a few quotes from John Berger but also the link to the You tube clips.

This is a good A-level presentation and then to get the students to listen to the first two chapters on video clip.

Students need to question how an image has lost its meaning through the advent of the camera and begin to draw a comparison of images before the camera and after the camera.

Students should also look at how the way we have reproduced the female form through the ages from Antiquity to the 21st Century and think about the meaning of what it is to be nude and what it is to be naked. John Berger has a lot of ideas on this and there are lots of phrases from his book discussing this concept and showing some examples of this in some major artworks.

One can never make justice of this incredible book but the slide show does allow for discussion in the class on important concepts and understandings we have of images in our time.