John Berger

When we suffer anguish we return to early childhood because that is the period in which we first learnt to read more

When we suffer anguish we return to early childhood because that is the period in which we first learnt to suffer the experience of total loss. It was more than that. It was the period in which we suffered more total losses than in all the rest of our life put together.

Unlike any other visual image, a photograph is not a rendering, an imitation or an interpretation of its subject, but read more

Unlike any other visual image, a photograph is not a rendering, an imitation or an interpretation of its subject, but actually a trace of it. No painting or drawing, however naturalist, belongs to its subject in the way that a photograph does.

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.