Here’s a question: are the visual essays that make up almost half of Ways of Seeing important to Ways of Seeing? Fifty years ago, as the book was being made, only one person seemed to think so: Sven Blomberg, the ‘tall Swede’ brought in by John Berger as an ‘outside eye’ on the process.¹ An artist himself, Blomberg was the only one of the five people whom Berger credited with turning Ways of Seeing into a book who had neither worked on the television series nor had any experience in making books. Let’s tally the others. Mike Dibb had been the series producer and director, Chris Fox its script consultant. Richard Hollis, responsible for the book’s design (later made ‘horrible’, in Hollis’s own words, by its inclusion and redesign for the Penguin On Design series),² had recently worked with Berger on his novel G, and was recognised as one of the most daring graphic designers of his generation. And then there was Berger: writer and presenter of the television series and the one whose name was on the cover. As for Blomberg … Well, he certainly was close to Berger. Talking to Juliette Kristensen for an anniversary issue of the Journal of Visual Design dedicated to Ways of Seeing, Dibb described Blomberg as ‘a close friend of John’s, an impoverished artist whom John wanted to help and thought would add something fresh to the book’. Hollis recalled: ‘He was rather a confusion because he made these montages of various things. I remember Mike saying to him “Sven, I don’t quite understand what it is that this is trying to say.” And Sven just said, “It’s fucking obvious!” And then went and stood on the balcony.’³

The montages were to become the book’s ‘purely pictorial essays’ – or as Dibb put it: ‘little visual essays that meant more, I think, to [Blomberg] than to everybody else’.⁴ Later, Hollis said that Berger ‘more or less approved’ of Blomberg’s essays, which Blomberg brought in as large sheets of paper with reproductions pasted on them. Dibb and Hollis were then assigned the task of fitting them into the pages of the book, tidying them up and ‘maybe editing them’. But they always struggled to understand their relevance.⁵

The pictorial essays certainly raised questions before publication. What happened next? The book’s fame and impact, taken along with the television series, grew to a level that makes it hard to measure. In the words of Berger’s biographer Joshua Sperling, Ways of Seeing became ‘so influential as to seem now, in retrospect, almost out of date – its influence disseminated, internalized, and since moved on from by the culture’,⁶ but the pictorial essays tend to be acknowledged in passing rather than subjected to in-depth analysis in most discussions of the work. There is one possible explanation: while the pictorial essays were intended to raise ‘as many questions as the verbal essays’, they also raise many of the same questions as the verbal essays. The first pictorial essay opens with a photograph of a woman in some kind of modern workspace, seemingly oblivious to her surroundings in a vaguely Vermeer-ish way, and another of a glamorous-looking woman taken from the inside of a car, playing it cool as she is ogled by an older man standing outside the vehicle. On the next spread, soft-core pornographic images placed side by side with reproductions of paintings of naked women by Picasso, Modigliani and Gauguin, as well as a Giacometti statue, face Rembrandt’s Bathsheba. On the pages that follow: advertisements of women’s stockings and deodorant; a spread of meat and olives; a still life. More women’s stockings, a woman doing her make-up, and finally, a woman photographed from behind as she faces a wall of press photographers, printed below a reproduction of Rubens’s The Judgement of Paris.

But even if the pictorial essays to a large extent serve as visualisations of points made in the verbal essays (the second and third pictorial essays can be viewed as riffs on the theme of oil-painting as a vehicle for showing off property), they are also a source of a not-so-subtle dissonance within the work. As the preface explains, ‘Sometimes in the pictorial essays no information at all is given about the images reproduced because it seemed to us that such information might distract from the points being made.’⁸ The reader is also assured that the ideas driving the book have not only shaped what is being said but also how: ‘The form of the book is as much to do with our purpose as the arguments contained within it.’⁹ The most distinguished feature of its ‘form’, however, is not the separation of words and images, as exemplified by the pictorial essays, but their fusion on the page. In designing the book, Hollis wanted to give equal weight to image and text, placing the images in the text as they were being referred to, ‘so you weren’t distracted and just read on’.¹⁰ His chief influence was Chris Marker’s book Commentaires, which has film stills set within the text. ‘As you read you knew exactly what was being talked about’, he told an interviewer in Eye in 2006. ‘It was a substitute for description: instead of talking about something, you show the objective visual evidence. That’s how I wanted to do Ways of Seeing, rather than have images by the side or text followed by a page of images.’¹¹

Ways of Seeing is explicitly offered as a book about words and images and the way they can be made to interact; a book that grew out of a television series, where words and images could be made to appear simultaneously on the screen in a real-time collage, an opportunity Berger and his collaborators seized with both hands. It is also a book that continued Berger’s effort – initiated by A Fortunate Man in 1967 and culminating to a large degree with A Seventh Man in 1975 – of dissolving the binary of the verbal vs. the visual and making text and image work together on the page, telling whatever needs to be told. Why, then, were words effectively banned from interaction with images in large parts of the book, with John Berger’s approval?

It might have come down to keeping Sven Blomberg happy. Yet the idea that words can ‘disrupt’, or even corrupt, our appreciation of images, isn’t confined to the book’s pictorial essays. Ways of Seeing is a book which testifies to the close relationship between words and images, but it’s also a cautionary tale about how the former can interfere with our understanding of the latter. In a famous passage from the book’s opening essay, a Van Gogh painting is reproduced underneath the words ‘This is a landscape of a cornfield with birds flying out of it. Look at it for a moment. Then turn the page.’ On the following page, the same painting is shown above the following text: ‘This is the last painting Van Gogh painted before he killed himself.’ Berger muses:

Something of the same can be said about the separation of image and text in Ways of Seeing: However much the three wordless essays are presented as being freed from the word, the feeling lingers that what the authors in fact did was to try – and fail – to protect them from it.

Are the pictorial essays not important then? In his conversation with Juliette Kristensen, Mike Dibb said he thought that Blomberg’s collages do ‘in a funny way help the book. They’re informal. They provide a sort of visual space and a kind of visual library.’¹⁵ The informality of Ways of Seeing – its distinctive approachableness – is by no means its least important quality, and the pictorial essays serve to signal that Ways of Seeing is different from the stuffy, mystifying art books it was setting itself up against. In 1972, the format of the visual essay was unusual, and, in books as popular as Ways of Seeing was to become, practically unheard of.¹⁶

There were precedents for this methodology, the closest perhaps being German art historian Aby Warburg’s Bilderatlas Mnemosyne. This work, started in 1927 but left unfinished when Warburg died in 1929, consisted of sixty-three wooden panels on which Warburg pinned close to 1,000 pictures culled from various sources: books, magazines, newspapers, advertisements. The pictures were arranged according to different themes, including ‘Vehicles of Tradition’, ‘From the Muses to Manet’ and ‘The classical tradition today’. The overarching goal was to trace recurring visual themes and patterns, from antiquity to the Renaissance and all the way up to contemporary culture.¹⁷ There were no captions, and only a few texts – Warburg believed the images, when juxtaposed and then placed in sequence, could foster ‘immediate, synoptic insights’.¹⁸ (He wanted it, one might say, to be f—ing obvious.) As Mark Fincher notes, neither Berger nor his collaborator was likely to be aware of Warburg’s Bilderatlas – Warburg’s work being, in the early 1970s, too obscure.¹⁹ Still, art historian Griselda Pollock has been among those making the link between Ways of Seeing and Warburg, via Walter Benjamin’s debts to the Bilderatlas and its use of the ‘still novel resources of the photomechanical reproduction as images of hitherto fixed art objects’.²⁰ Pollock names the pictorial essays as the inspiration for her own use of the format in Vision and Difference, her 2003 analysis of the sexual politics of modernist art. Others have argued for their pedagogical value, as models for the teaching of a cultural analysis less indebted to the verbal and more open to visually based knowledge.²¹

Fifty years after they were first made, the pictorial essays of Ways of Seeing still serve as testaments to the collaborative process out of which the book grew, with each collaborator leaving his mark – one way or the other. A more thorough analysis of their meaning beyond the scope of the arguments of Ways of Seeing might still be relevant. But their most interesting feature might be precisely their contradictory relationship with the project as a whole. In that sense, they are obviously important.

这里有一个问题：几乎占Ways of Seeing一半的视觉文章对Ways of Seeing重要吗？五十年前，当这本书正在制作时，似乎只有一个人这么认为：斯文布隆伯格，约翰伯格带来的“高个子瑞典人”作为过程的“局外人”。¹作为一名艺术家，布隆伯格是伯杰认为改变了观看方式的五个人中唯一的一个变成一本书，他既没有参与过电视连续剧，也没有任何制作书籍的经验。让我们计算其他人。迈克·迪布 (Mike Dibb) 担任剧集制片人兼导演，克里斯·福克斯 (Chris Fox) 担任剧本顾问。Richard Hollis，负责本书的设计（后来变得“可怕”，用霍利斯自己的话来说，因为它包含并重新设计了 Penguin On Design 系列），2 最近与 Berger 合作完成了他的小说 G，并被^公认为其中之一他这一代最大胆的平面设计师。然后是伯杰：电视剧的编剧和主持人，而且名字出现在封面上。至于布隆伯格……嗯，他当然与伯格关系密切。与 Juliette Kristensen 就Journal of Visual Design周年纪念刊进行对话献给《观看之道》一书的迪布将布隆伯格描述为“约翰的密友，一位贫穷的艺术家，约翰想帮助他，并认为他会为这本书增添一些新鲜的东西”。霍利斯回忆说：“他相当混乱，因为他用各种东西制作了这些蒙太奇。我记得迈克对他说：“斯文，我不太明白这句话想表达什么。” 斯文只是说，“这太他妈明显了！” 然后去站在阳台上。^3个

蒙太奇将成为这本书的“纯图画散文” ——或者正如迪布所说：“我认为，对 [布隆伯格] 而言，比对其他任何人都更有意义的小视觉散文”。⁴后来，霍利斯说伯杰“或多或少地赞同”布隆伯格的文章，布隆伯格把这些文章作为大张纸拿来，上面贴着复制品。然后，Dibb 和 Hollis 被分配了将它们装入书页的任务，整理它们并“可能编辑它们”。但他们总是难以理解它们的相关性。^5个

这些图文并茂的文章在出版前肯定会引起质疑。接下来发生了什么？这本书的名气和影响，连同电视剧一起，增长到一个难以衡量的水平。用 Berger 的传记作者 Joshua Sperling 的话来说，《Ways of Seeing》变得“影响如此之大，以至于现在回想起来，几乎已经过时了——它的影响被传播、内化，并从那以后被文化所取代”，6 但^图画文章在大多数工作讨论中，往往会被顺便承认，而不是进行深入分析。有一种可能的解释：虽然图画文章旨在提出“与口头文章一样多的问题”，但它们也提出了许多相同的问题问题作为口头论文。第一篇图片文章以一张女性在某种现代工作空间中的照片开头，她似乎以一种隐隐约约的维米尔式方式忘记了周围的环境，另一张是从车内拍摄的一位看起来迷人的女性，玩得很酷当她被站在车外的一位年长男子注视时。在接下来的传播中，软核色情图像与毕加索、莫迪利亚尼和高更的裸体女性绘画复制品以及贾科梅蒂雕像并排放置，面对伦勃朗的芭丝谢芭。在随后的页面上：女士丝袜和除臭剂的广告；一片肉和橄榄；静物 更多女性丝袜，一个正在化妆的女性，最后，一个女性面对一堵墙的新闻摄影师从后面拍照，巴黎的审判。

但即使图文在很大程度上是对口头​​文章中观点的形象化（第二和第三图文可以看作是对油画作为炫富工具主题的即兴表演），它们也是也是作品中不那么微妙的不和谐的来源。正如序言所解释的那样，“有时在图片文章中根本没有提供有关复制图像的信息，因为在我们看来，此类信息可能会分散人们对所提出观点的注意力。” ⁸读者还可以确信，推动这本书的思想不仅影响了所说的内容，而且影响了方式：“这本书的形式与我们的目的和其中包含的论点一样重要。” ⁹然而，其“形式”最显着的特征并不是文字和图像的分离，如图画文章所体现的那样，而是它们在页面上的融合。在设计这本书时，霍利斯希望对图像和文本给予同等的重视，将图像按照它们被引用的方式放置在文本中，“这样你就不会分心，继续阅读”。¹⁰他的主要影响是克里斯·马克 (Chris Marker) 的书Commentaires，该书在文本中设置了电影剧照。2006 年，他在Eye杂志上对一位采访者说：“当你阅读时，你确切地知道正在谈论什么。”它是描述的替代品：你不是在谈论什么，而是展示客观的视觉证据。这就是我想做的观看的方式，而不是在旁边有图像或文本后跟一页图像。¹¹

Ways of Seeing是一本关于文字和图像以及它们如何相互作用的书。一本从电视连续剧中脱颖而出的书，文字和图像可以实时拼贴在屏幕上同时出现，伯杰和他的合作者双手抓住了这个机会。这也是一本书延续了伯杰的努力——1967 年由一个幸运的人发起，并在很大程度上达到了1975 年的第七个人——消解了语言与视觉的二元关系，并使文本和图像在页，告诉任何需要告诉。那么，为什么在约翰伯格的同意下，在书中的大部分内容中，文字被有效地禁止与图像互动？

这可能归结为让 Sven Blomberg 开心。然而，文字可以“扰乱”甚至破坏我们对图像的欣赏的想法并不局限于本书的图画文章。《观看之道》这本书证明了文字和图像之间的密切关系，但它也是一个关于前者如何干扰我们对后者的理解的警示故事。在该书开篇的一段著名文章中，梵高的一幅画被复制在“这是一片玉米地的风景，鸟儿从中飞出”的字样下方。看一会儿。然后翻页。在下一页，同一幅画出现在以下文字的上方：“这是梵高自杀前画的最后一幅画。” 伯杰沉思：

关于《观看之道》中图像和文本的分离，也可以说是相同的：无论三篇无字文章如何被描述为从单词中解放出来，作者实际上所做的就是尝试——但失败了——的感觉挥之不去- 保护他们免受它。

那图画作文不重要吗？在与 Juliette Kristensen 的谈话中，Mike Dibb 说他认为 Blomberg 的拼贴画“以一种有趣的方式帮助了这本书”。他们是非正式的。它们提供了一种视觉空间和一种视觉图书馆。¹⁵ 《观看之道》的非正式性——它独特的平易近人——绝不是它最不重要的品质，而图画文章表明《观看之道》不同于它所反对的沉闷、神秘的艺术书籍。1972 年，视觉论文的格式很不寻常，而且在像Ways of Seeing这样流行的书籍中，几乎闻所未闻。¹⁶

这种方法有先例，最接近的可能是德国艺术史学家 Aby Warburg 的Bilderatlas Mnemosyne。这部作品始于 1927 年，但在 1929 年 Warburg 去世时仍未完成，由 63 块木板组成，Warburg 将近 1,000 张图片固定在上面，这些图片来自各种来源：书籍、杂志、报纸、广告。这些图片根据不同的主题排列，包括“传统的载体”、“从缪斯到马奈”和“当今的古典传统”。总体目标是追溯从古代到文艺复兴时期一直到当代文化的反复出现的视觉主题和模式。¹⁷没有标题，只有一些文字——Warburg 相信这些图像，当并列放置然后按顺序放置时，可以培养“即时的、概要的洞察力”。¹⁸（他希望它，有人可能会说，太明显了。）正如马克芬奇所指出的，伯杰和他的合作者都不太可能知道瓦尔堡的 Bilderatlas——瓦尔堡的作品在 1970 年代初期太晦涩了。¹⁹尽管如此，艺术史学家格里塞尔达·波洛克 (Griselda Pollock) 一直在通过沃尔特·本雅明 (Walter Benjamin) 对Bilderatlas的借鉴及其对“照相制版复制的新颖资源作为迄今为止固定艺术品的图像”的使用，将观看方式与瓦尔堡联系起来。²⁰波洛克将这些图画文章命名为她自己在Vision and Difference中使用这种格式的灵感，这是她 2003 年对现代主义艺术的性政治的分析。其他人则主张它们的教学价值，作为文化分析教学的模型，较少依赖语言，对基于视觉的知识更开放。²¹

在它们首次制作 50 年后，《观看之道》中的图画文章仍然是这本书成长过程中合作过程的证明，每个合作者都以一种或另一种方式留下了自己的印记。在“观看方式”的论证范围之外对它们的含义进行更彻底的分析可能仍然是相关的。但他们最有趣的特点可能恰恰是他们与整个项目的矛盾关系。从这个意义上说，它们显然很重要。