Lecture 7: Analysing Photographs - The Ideology of Images

During today's lecture we learnt about John Berger and Susan Sontag and their ideology of photographs. I really enjoyed learning about Berger and Sontag and their books.

John Berger, (1926-2017), wrote in his book, Ways of Seeing, how men and women are perceived in photographs. He also focuses on the relationship between seeing and knowing.
In his chapter 1: Seeing and Knowing, Berger notes how the way we see things is affected by what we know and what we believe. This happens through every picture that we see, it is affected by our current knowledge.
We also only choose what we look at according to Berger, and what we see is a choice of what the photographer wants us to see.

During chapter 3 of Ways of Seeing, John Berger focuses on the ideologies of gender in art. Two quotes in the book...

• “A man’s presence is dependent upon the promise of power which he embodies. The promised power may be moral, physical, temperamental, economic, social, sexual - but its object is always exterior to the man. A man’s presence suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you.
• ‘A woman’s presence expresses her own attitude to herself, and defines what can and cannot be done to her. Her presence is manifest in her gestures, voice, opinions, expressions, clothes, chosen surroundings, taste - indeed there is nothing she can do which does not contribute to her presence.”

These quotes are from 1972, and they are still true today in 2017. Women are presented in photographs to appeal to men and be a sexual object to be admired. Men are the opposite, they are allowed to appear strong, and have money.

Susan Sontag, (1933-2004), has a book called On Photography (1977). She addressed the problems that both aesthetic and moral posed by the omnipresence of photographed images.
Sontag she thinks that