Describe First, Then Read

This month’s reading selection is John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, first published in 1972. We take it as a starting point for a question: what do you see before you know an artist’s name, a date or a title?

Choose an image you want to spend time with. First describe its colours, people, objects and distances. Then read the accompanying information and look again. Which detail becomes clearer? Which impression now seems open to another interpretation?

Try the exercise in a physical space, too. A frame, the light, a wall and your distance from a work can each become an observation. Compare what you noticed with someone else, and let reading continue as a conversation.

Did reading about the work change your first impression?

Selection and looking prompts by Sun & Chiou