Berger - Ways of Seeing: Chapter 1

• Seeing comes before words - effects what we believe.
• Aware that we can also be seen.
• All images are man-made - an image is a sight which has been recreated or reproduced - detached appearance(s) from the place and time.
• The image can outlast what it represents - how somebody had once looked - richer than literature in this sense.
• Assumptions about art:
• Beauty
• Genius
• Truth
• Civilisation 
• Form
• Status
• Taste
• These assumptions obscure the past.
• The compositional unity of a painting contributes fundamentally to the power of its image.
• Convention of perspective.
• The invention of the camera changed the way men saw - immediately reflected in painting e.g. cubists - all views around object visible.
• Camera reproduces a painting - uniqueness destroyed and meanings changed - multiplies and fragments into many meanings.
• Painting on a TV screen - surrounded by house and wallpaper - meaning influenced by this.
• Images and paintings can gain impressiveness by market value.
• Meaning of paintings is no longer attached to them - meaning becomes transmittable. 
• When a painting is reproduced by a film camera, it inevitably becomes material for the filmmaker's argument - lends authority to the filmmaker.
• Reproduced paintings often come with a caption - the image now illustrates sentence - meaning changed.
• Art of the past has now become a political issue.