“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.”

English art critic, novelist, painter and poet

John Berger was an English art critic, novelist, painter and poet. He lived from 1926 to 2017, and spent more than fifty years in France. He is best known for his writing on art and for fiction that won wide attention, especially his Booker Prize winning novel G. Berger’s essay collection Ways of Seeing, written alongside the BBC series of the same name, became a landmark in art criticism and is still widely read. His work moves between visual culture, fiction and poetry, often returning to questions of how art is seen and understood.