Ways of Seeing – John Berger

"Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak."

Based on a BBC series, John Berger critiques the Western tradition of oil painting. He argues that art has always been tied to property and status, and that the way we see images is manipulated by advertising and capitalism. He famously analyzes the 'male gaze', showing how women are depicted as objects to be looked at.

Berger's book is a classic of art criticism and visual literacy. It democratized the study of art, stripping away the mystique of the gallery to reveal the political and social ideologies hidden within images. It teaches us to question what we see.