Visual Culture In The Cultural Politics

John Berger is one of the representative figure of the contemporary British left-wingwriters. Berger took Marxism as the tone of his criticism by the number of writings onvisual culture studies as a starting point, focused on the cultural and political issues in thevisual culture. The context of visual culture shift, based on Michel Foucault’s power/resistance theory, Berger’s theoretical ideas of visual culture embodies two respects ofvision: the violence and the repellency. As the pioneers of the viewing of ideology, Bergertook efforts to unearth the visual phenomenon of class, gender oppression, while alsoactively exploring the possibility of resistance to visual violence, tried to establish hisdemocracy Utopia.It is undeniable that Berger’s theory of light pointed out the direction for theestablishment of a broader vision in the public domain. However, Berger also appeared inthe course of excavations in the visual violent pan-ideological tendency. At the same time,the beauty of the visual objects has been damaged when we look at everything in theideological perspective. Too much emphasis on the political process, the concern of theimages themselves also weakened. In the attempt to create the visual field of utopian, Bergalso failed to avoid the stereotype of elitism.