On 5 November 2026, John Berger would have turned one hundred. The writer, painter and art critic left behind a question that cannot be settled simply by pointing out that images are political: how can we recognise the social conditions that shape them without reducing them to evidence for a preconceived diagnosis?
Berger began with seeing itself. “Ways of Seeing”, which appeared in 1972 as a four-part BBC series and a book, addressed not only individual paintings but also their reproduction, ownership and interpretation. The crucial shift was this: an image does not simply hang quietly before us. We encounter it within a framework of institutions, money, gender, history and media. Who is allowed to look, who is depicted and who controls meaning — all of this is part of looking.
Look first, then explain
Berger was no neutral guide through a gallery. His critique of the Western artistic tradition targeted the authority that makes a work appear an untouchable treasure while obscuring its social conditions. In “About Looking”, his attention ranges from painting and sculpture to photographs and animals in zoos. That breadth alone challenges the idea that art criticism must confine itself to the artwork as an isolated object.
Yet Berger’s political incisiveness does not automatically give every political reading carte blanche. The historian Jonathan Conlin has pointed out that the persuasive force of “Ways of Seeing” could undermine its own intention: the series sought to encourage viewers to develop independent interpretations, but was also understood as an invitation to read images exclusively in political terms. This is an objection that deserves to be taken seriously. When every detail merely confirms domination, all that remains of the work in the end is an illustration.
The answer cannot be to banish social questions from the museum once more. It lies in a more precise sequence — or rather, in a shifting focus of attention. What can actually be seen in the image? How is it made? Which formal decisions direct the gaze, and what resistance or ambiguity remains? And under what historical conditions was the work created, circulated and viewed? The answers should test one another, not replace one another.
No shortcut to the message
As a writer, Berger knew only too well that meaning is not simply a message that can be extracted from an image. Form is not a decorative coating over a political statement. It determines how something becomes visible: through framing and scale, proximity and distance, rhythm and omission. A social interpretation that overlooks this specificity is not radical but imprecise.
Conversely, the claim that art speaks for itself is often merely a convenient way of making one’s own position invisible. Even the supposedly pure gaze has a history. Berger’s enduring impetus lies not in providing a definitive method, but in understanding close looking once again as an activity with consequences. Anyone looking at an image does not stand outside its world: their own attention is part of what a work can mean.
The centenary therefore calls for no tribute to an infallible interpreter. It recalls a productive conflict: art is neither a treasure severed from life nor mere evidence for political judgements. Berger helps us take the connection between images and the conditions of life seriously. That connection is most fruitful where it sharpens the gaze — while keeping it open.
Original reviewed by the editors · 3 November 2026
