Response to "Ways of Seeing"

In John Berger’s article, “Ways of Seeing” he articulates his thoughts on how seeing is the foremost sense of our being. I really enjoyed his work as I think he brought up some important points that would counter some of today’s culture. He first says that seeing establishes our place in the world, which to a certain extent it does. Through are sense of sight we are able to establish hierarchies and order. What I think is interesting is that though we see the same things, we interpret things differently, which is part of our individuality. Person 1 could see someone purposely trip another student, but Person 2 could see it as an accident. Furthermore, we also see with our past experiences. Person 1 could have been maliciously tripped before, which causes him to believe the student was tripped on purpose. We do this with art as well, which is both a shame and an interesting way to view art. It is a shame because we do not share the artist’s biases and therefore we might find it hard to know what the artist is saying. On the other hand, we are all able to see and highlight a different characteristic of art, which makes it unique to every individual. In both ways, we have an obligation to see critically and with purpose or we are “looking” rather than “seeing.” Seeing and seeing art should be challenging and informative. That being said if a painting is trying to express soft and relaxing emotions, we should still be trying to process information not just let the emotion of the piece envelop us. Unfortunately, seeing is not valued by society as it cannot be uniformly tested; however, those who are able to see have a greater value to society as they enhance it with their vision.