John Berger

Compare the cinema with theatre. Both are dramatic arts. Theatre brings actors before a public and every night during the read more

Compare the cinema with theatre. Both are dramatic arts. Theatre brings actors before a public and every night during the season they re-enact the same drama. Deep in the nature of theatre is a sense of ritual. The cinema, by contrast, transports its audience individually, singly, out of the theatre towards the unknown.

Unlike any other visual image, a photograph is not a rendering, an imitation or an interpretation of its subject, but read more

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.

Publicity is the life of this culture - in so far as without publicity capitalism could not survive - and read more

Publicity is the life of this culture - in so far as without publicity capitalism could not survive - and at the same time publicity is its dream.

The past grows gradually around one, like a placenta for dying.

The past grows gradually around one, like a placenta for dying.

Compassion has no place in the natural order of the world which operates on the basis of necessity. Compassion opposes read more

Compassion has no place in the natural order of the world which operates on the basis of necessity. Compassion opposes this order and is therefore best thought of as being in some way supernatural.