Ways Of Seeing

Berger’s first argument in this chapter is that “seeing comes before words” (7). In one sense, a child looks and sees before they can speak. In another sense, “seeing…establishes our place in the surrounding world” (7). Although we eventually grow to be able to describe and explain our surrounding world using words, words will never supersede our visual experience of the world. Also, words will never quite resolve or fully explain the visual phenomena that we experience—for example, although we use words to logically explain a sunset, words can never fully account for our visual experience of a sunset. At this point, Berger refers to the Surrealist painter René Magritte. He states that Magritte commented on this “always-present gap between words and seeing in a painting called The Key of Dreams” (7). The painting is reproduced in the text.

The way we see things is influenced by what we know or what we believe. In turn, our knowledge and beliefs are shaped by the culture and society that surrounds us. For example, in the Middle Ages, when a belief in Hell was more widespread, the sight of fire must have meant something different from what it means when we see fire today.