Ways of Seeing by John Berger

This book talks of how we see things and how what we see is influenced by assumptions for example concerning the nature of beauty, class, gender and political stance. He refers to the difference between seeing and looking and how what we see is an act of choice and thus we only see what we chose to see whereas looking is not. For example when a photographer sees something in the camera lens he is selecting an area, a choice subject, this is his perception of the environment whereas looking is not selecting an area of focus and is hence not choice.
However what I found interesting in theis book is when Berger talks about reproductions and how the camera has influenced paintings uniqueness. Before the camera paintings were unique to the place where they resided , they could not be seen in two places at one time moreover paintings were produced to suit the environment, for example a church. Yet now with reproduction of work this has fragmented the meaning of the pieces, for example when work is seen on the television, there is a different atmosphere depending on where the television is, the background etc, the painting goes to the spectator, rather than the spectator to the painting. The uniqueness of a painting is therefore not related to what the painting shows but the copies, further with reproductions it also allows the meaning to become tranmittable, lending itself to the environment for example in film making. I found this topic interesting as I then began to see like Berger was suggesting how there becomes a political issue as many people just see the reproductions where the meaning is lost and are thus unable to understand art and hence there becomes divisions within society depending on your perspective.
Another thing I found intersting is his analogy between possessing and the way of seeing which is incorporated into painting ie buying a piece of work because you want to possess what it shows. This comment made me think about why I would buy a painting or would not buy a painting and I think this is very relevent within art, for me I am not going to buy a painting of a dirty dustbin, yet would prefer to buy a painting of something glamourous. I found within the book many comments such as these that are so simple but made me immediately think about there relevence to modern society, for example again the difference within art of the nude and naked and how modern society and the media have made use of this within advertising.
Overall although  I found the book rather dated, I found the comments very relevent within society today.