John Berger

Compare the cinema with theatre. Both are dramatic arts. Theatre brings actors before a public and every night during the read more

Compare the cinema with theatre. Both are dramatic arts. Theatre brings actors before a public and every night during the season they re-enact the same drama. Deep in the nature of theatre is a sense of ritual. The cinema, by contrast, transports its audience individually, singly, out of the theatre towards the unknown.

The past grows gradually around one, like a placenta for dying.

The past grows gradually around one, like a placenta for dying.

Compassion has no place in the natural order of the world which operates on the basis of necessity. Compassion opposes read more

Compassion has no place in the natural order of the world which operates on the basis of necessity. Compassion opposes this order and is therefore best thought of as being in some way supernatural.

The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result read more

The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing.

Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.

Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.