With the invention of photography, we acquired a new means of expression more closely associated with memory than any other. But exactly how and why do photographs move us? What can we learn from family albums and the private use of photographs? Do appearances constitute a code of life, a sort of "half-language"? Is it possible to use photographs on behalf of the photographed? Can one speak of a capitalist use of photography and, if so, is there a genuine alternative?

These are some of the questions this book examines as it lays the groundwork for a new theory of photography that moves beyond the landmarks established by Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, and Susan Sontag. Berger focuses on the enigma of the photograph, its ambiguity, its weak intentionality, and the way in which he feels it acts as a
"quotation from appearances" (unlike a painting, which translates from appearances).

However, this book's particular originality lies in the way John Berger and Jean Mohr set out to demonstrate the practice of their theory. No book on photography quite resembles this one, with its mixture of stories, theory, portrait, and confession. Its principal story, told without words in 150 photographs, concerns the life of a fictional peasant woman. It is totally unlike a film and has nothing to do with report-age. It constitutes another way of telling.

Screen writer, art critic, novelist, documentary writer, John Berger is uniquely suited to provide an insight into the nature and place of photography in our world. Jean Mohr has worked over the last twenty years as a photographer for the United Nations.

VG copy light wear to extremities, light creasing to spine.

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