"Ways of Seeing" by John Berger (published 1972)
While reading Berger's Ways of Seeing for the second time in many years, I reacted less by noting how obvious Berger's arguments were and more by realizing that the text has become somewhat dated. The technology that exists today, especially since the advent of the internet and social media, has become insidiously nuanced and Ways of Seeing had no way to predict that kind of capital evolution in terms of the creation of new ways to exploit the poor through reproduced images, i.e. how advertising now sways the public by manipulating and playing with its fears - if not so much anymore its envy. However, Berger's classic remains a seminal text within Cultural Studies and Critical Theory. Berger explains how society has been affected by the transformation of artistic technology, from oil painting, to the camera, to publicity advertising in the modern world, and how that transformation feeds on itself as a way to stabilize and defend the values and ideologies of the wealth...