John Berger's Views On Contemporary Photography

First of all, before discussing the above statement in relation to any contemporary photography practice, I would like to analyze John Berger’s perspective upon photography. While writing his book Understanding a photograph, Berger comments on the fact that a photograph is a result of a photographer’s decision that a particular event/object or person are worth recording and worth to be seen. A photograph does not have the purpose of celebrating the particular event nor the fact that we, as viewers, are able to see it, but it has the purpose to communicate a particular message about the event/object it records. The photograph has the power to record a specific moment which would be impossible to recreate due to changing conditions and if everything that existed would be constantly, again and again photographed, then every photograph would become meaningless. In a much simpler way, the photograph itself is the proof that the person who took it, the photographer decided that seeing this is worth recording.

Now, the contemporary photography practice is so extended and can have so many approaches from endless perspectives, that it has to be divided, split into different types so it can be easier for us to understand.

Photography became such a largely used medium especially because of its ability to possess so many functions. It can be used as a collecting point for artistic ideas and it has the capability to capture an authentic vision that can be further shared with the public. It can be used as a medium which provide the photographer with the power to manipulate, compose and frame, but it can also be used as a mean to capture a scene without disrupting it (such as documentary photography). Photographs have the power to critique quietly and they can highlight the problems that are going on in the society. These certain functions of the photograph therefore, can divide the photographers into two categories: they can be seen as artists or as outsiders/observers. Though, this does not mean that these two categories cannot breach their limits at some point and borrow elements from one another. Even though the above-mentioned categories possess different purposes, it is very important to underline the fact that neither of the outcomes of the photographs would come to life if it would not be for the human hand, the photographer who took the decision that the represented scene/object/person/etc. is something worth capturing. This way, the photograph can be translated into the artist’s response to what surrounds him and what he considers it’s worth sharing from his own perspective. Even when the photographer is acting just as an observer, the results of his insights of the outside world and how he envisions it become tangible with the help of the photograph.

In his commentary about Susan Meiselas’ Nicaragua photographic series, John Berger talks about “the mysterious attribute which is presence. A presence is a source of energy offered to others.” Through photography, “The artist has the capability to translate the faraway drone of horror into something real and immediate, something very tangible that we may be moved to act upon our response to it.” (cite Nicaragua pg 24)

Contemporary photography has changed not only what we see, but how we see it. Perspective makes the eye the center of the visible world and the camera eye use this characteristic for its own ends. The stillness and the uninterrupted silence of the photographs makes the human eye gaze into a world that is still his own, but viewed from different perspectives and approaches. The camera frees itself from the human immobility and allows us to overcome the limit of experimental, perceptible knowledge.

In his Manifesto written in 1923, Russian Soviet pioneer documentary film director and cinema theorist, Dziga Vertov, talks about how the camera is freed from the boundaries of time and space and offer a fresh perception into the world, “recording one movement after another in the most complex combinations.” (insert manifesto citation) Decades later, after the use of the camera has spread more and more into the contemporary world of photographic practice, his words still apply to the way we use the photographs and our capacity of recording what we believe is worth recording.

The events which a photograph portrays are curious and peculiar, many times they can be explicable according to the viewer’s knowledge of them prior to his seeing the photograph. There comes the question, what gives the photograph meaning and what makes the decision of the photographer, that the recorded event is worth seeing, large and vibrant? John Berger talks about how the photographer’s way of seeing is reflected in his choice of subject. The photograph itself is a decision made by the photographer who chose to select that sight, in that specific moment and separate them from the first place and time in which they made their initial appearance. Through photography, the artist is able to share in a physical manner his vision and his experience of the visible.