WORK COURTESY HOLLYBUSH GARDENS AND NATIONAL MUSEUMS, LIVERPOOL.As an introduction to this powerful piece the dominance of vision in our lives is suggested by the fact that seeing comes before words- both in the infant, and as we make sense of the world through seeing and thinking (Berger, 1972: 7). INSTALLATION VIEW, SPIKE ISLAND, BRISTOL (2017). IMAGE CREDIT: LUBAINA HIMID, NAMING THE MONEY (2004). John Berger was a storyteller, a novelist, a painter, a poet, a critic, a screenwriter, a playwright.

She is the author of a book on Bristol's culture, 'Massive Attack - Out of the Comfort Zone' and has been the writer-in-residence at the Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol, UK since 2019. She has reported from the USA, Europe, and East and Central Africa for the BBC World Service, AFP, Reuters, CBC and more. Melissa Chemam is a writer and broadcaster. It was part of an exhibition called “Navigation Charts”, which felt fitting for this port city with its complex past, enriched by transatlantic trades… Sugar, tobacco and enslaved people'.

I came upon it in 2017, at Spike Island, an art gallery here in Bristol. In today's episode, we follow Bristol-based French writer Melissa Chemam to the island of Zanzibar, to the refugee camps of Calais and into galleries back in the UK: 'I discovered Himid’s installation ‘Naming The Money’ almost by chance. To mark the fiftieth anniversary of Ways of Seeing, Radio 4 invites five writers to tell us about a work of art that is important to them, and to reflect on how Ways of Seeing influenced their own ways of looking at - and thinking about - art. The book published to accompany the series has never been out of print and has had a profound influence on popular understanding of art criticism and visual culture. The programmes explored Walter Benjamin's ideas about the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction the female nude and the male gaze oil painting, status and ownership advertising, art and commerce.

Our perception or appreciation of an image depends also upon our own way of seeing'. The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe. Across a series of four half-hour episodes, Berger talked about how we look at art, and why it matters: 'The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. First broadcast in 1972 on BBC Two, Ways of Seeing was a collaboration between the writer John Berger and director Mike Dibb.

Walter benjamin ways of seeing