About Looking

About Looking

by JohnBerger (Author)

Synopsis

As a novelist, essayist, and cultural historian, John Berger is a writer of dazzling eloquence and arresting insight whose work amounts to a subtle, powerful critique of the canons of our civilization. In About Looking he explores our role as observers to reveal new layers of meaning in what we see. How do the animals we look at in zoos remind us of a relationship between man and beast all but lost in the twentieth century? What is it about looking at war photographs that doubles their already potent violence? How do the nudes of Rodin betray the threats to his authority and potency posed by clay and flesh? And how does solitude inform the art of Giacometti? In asking these and other questions, Berger alters the vision of anyone who reads his work.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 224
Edition: UK ed.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published: 20 Apr 2009

ISBN 10: 0747599572
ISBN 13: 9780747599579
Book Overview: Ways of Seeing was based on a BBC TV series and was a ground-breaking, seminal text that completely revitalised and revolutionised discussions about art. About Looking continues this original approach to art and photography For fans of the essays of Susan Sontag, especially On Photography, and Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography by Roland Barthes About Looking was originally published in 1980 in the UK by a small publishers. In the US it is Berger's second biggest selling title for Vintage

Media Reviews
'Polemical, meditative, radical, always original, Berger's essays are extremely wide-ranging' Geoff Dyer 'One of the most influential intellectuals of our time' Sean O'Hagan, Observer 'A wonderful artist and thinker' Susan Sontag 'Berger is a writer one demands to know more about ... an intriguing and powerful mind and talent' New York Times
Author Bio
John Berger was born in London in 1926. His many books, innovative in form and far-reaching in their historical and political insight, include the Booker Prize-winning novel G, To the Wedding and King. Amongst his outstanding studies of art and photography are Another Way of Telling, The Success and Failure of Picasso, Titian: Nymph and Shepherd (with Katya Berger) and the internationally acclaimed Ways of Seeing. He lives and works in a small village in the French Alps, the setting for his trilogy Into Their Labours (Pig Earth, Once in Europa and Lilac and Flag). His collection of essays The Shape of a Pocket was published in 2001. His latest novel, From A to X, was published in 2008.