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John Berger Quotes about Photography

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Photographs bear witness to a human choice being exercised in a given situation. A photograph is a result of the photographer's decision that it is worth recording that this particular event or this particular object

Photographs bear witness to a human choice being exercised in a given situation. A photograph is a result of the photographer's decision that it is worth recording that this particular event or this particular object has been seen. If everything that existed were continually being photographed, every photograph would become meaningless.

John Berger
Photography, Choices, Decision
John Berger (2008). “Selected Essays of John Berger”, p.344, Vintage

The camera relieves us of the burden of memory.

John Berger
Photography, Memories, Cameras
1978 New Statesman,17 Aug.

What makes photography a strange invention is that its primary raw materials are light and time.

John Berger
Inspirational, Photography, Light
John Berger, Jean Mohr (2016). “Another Way of Telling: A Possible Theory of Photography”, p.75, Bloomsbury Publishing

All photographs are there to remind us of what we forget. In this - as in other ways - they are the opposite of paintings. Paintings record what the painter remembers. Because each one of us forgets different things, a photo more than a painting may change its meaning according to who is looking at it.

John Berger
Photography, Pain, Opposites

Photography, because it stops the flow of life, is always flirting with death.

John Berger
Photography, Flirting, Flow
1983 In the New Statesman, 22/29 Dec.

The camera relieves us of the burden of memory. It surveys us like God, and it surveys for us. Yet no other god has been so cynical, for the camera records in order to forget.

John Berger
God, Photography, Memories
John Berger (2015). “About Looking”, p.44, Bloomsbury Publishing

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.

John Berger
Photography, Drawing, Doe
John Berger (2015). “About Looking”, p.40, Bloomsbury Publishing

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