John Berger and Michael Dibb
50 YEARS AGO IN JANUARY 1972, the BBC aired the provocative miniseries Ways of Seeing, which explored how the camera and the widespread use of photographs altered our perception of art publicity images, including the representation of women and the male gaze.
The writer and host of the program, John Berger, declared: “With the invention of the camera, everything changed.” Middle-aged at the time, with a mane of long, curly hair, wearing an inexpensive chain-mail print shirt, collar unbuttoned, Berger did not look one bit like the stuffy art critic a viewer might have expected. Drawing on the work of Russian pioneer film director Dziga Vertov and German cultural theorist Walter Benjamin, Berger stated authoritatively, in sonorous tones that, for the first time in history, “We could see things which were not there in front of us. Appearances could travel across the world.” Brought to us by the camera, we no longer had to visit museums to view paintings, because the paintings would come to us through photography. This was a startling revelation and forever altered our perception of art.
Directed and produced by Michael Dibb, Ways of Seeing took the BBC by surprise and became a television sensation, garnering awards and critical accolades. Berger and Dibb, the co-creators of the series, were little known beyond the literary and cultural scene in the orbit of London, though each would become influential, as a writer and as a filmmaker, respectively.
Soon after, was published as a pocket-sized paper-back. Profusely illustrated and innovatively designed, the publication was dubbed the world’s “smallest art
