Ways of Seeing. Based on the Television Series with John Berger
New York: Viking Press, 1973. 1st Edition. Octavo, publisher's tan cloth over patterned sage paper-covered boards, spine stamped in black and blue, tan endpapers, top edge stained blue, original illustrated dust jacket.
"Seeing comes before words." First edition of British art critic, novelist, and public intellectual John Berger’s landmark study of visual culture, based on the BBC television series of the same name. The series aired in four parts in January 1972 and was conceived as a response to Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation (1969), and drawing heavily on Walter Benjamin’s "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1936). The book has seven numbered essays (four in words and pictures, and three in pictures alone), looking at the female nude and the male gaze, cultural mystification, European oil painting, and advertising. The book was made collaboratively with Sven Blomberg, Chris Fox, producer Michael Dibb, and designer Richard Hollis. Hollis’s radical layout sets the text in bold type, runs the reproductions straight into the text, and starts the first essay on the front cover, beneath René Magritte’s "The Key of Dreams." The same year as the BBC series, Berger won the Booker Prize for his novel G. and gave half the prize money to the British Black Panthers. Illustrated in black-and-white. Originally published in the UK the year prior alongside the television series. Small stain to top edge of text block; unclipped dust jacket with light chipping and edgewear. Very good. Item #13693
$400.00