| John Berger’s “ontology” is a visual extension of the phenomenological concept of “being”.On the basis of this extension,his understanding of “being” is also influenced by existentialism,Marxism,social reality,historical tradition and his personal characteristics.Briefly,Berger thinks that “being” means that a being appears as it is.According to his view,with the help of watching visual artworks,viewers can ask the question of “being” through following three dimensions: the subject experiences being,the image narrates being,and watching seeks being.Berger has multiple identities such as painter,art critic,Marxist and literary creator,which enables Berger to construct his unique understanding of “being” between politics and art,Marxism and existentialism.First of all,individuals call back their subjectivity through experience,so as to reach the understanding of “being”.“Experience” includes not only active experience,but also passive experience.With clarifying the active experience as “the peak experience of self” and the passive experience as “the experience of others’ pain”,Berger discusses how the subject approaches “its own being”.In fact,behind these two diametrically opposite ways of experience is the struggle between “ontology” and “ethics”.In Levinas’ view,existentialist phenomenology explains the relationship between “being” and “beings” through ontology,which is just a cover-up of things themselves,so it is far away from the authentic being of beings.While “other as the other itself” or “other as such” provides an ethical way to ask the question of “being”.The value of Berger’s “ontology” lies in that with the help of “peak experience” and “the experience of others’ pain” discussed in painting and photography,he bridged the gap between ontology and ethics to a certain extent,and put forward the visual dimension of “the subject experiencing being”.In addition,with the analysis of oil paintings,Berger also discussed the concrete manifestation of “alienation of experience”:through vision,“experience” is degraded to “possession”.Secondly,images show themselves through narration,thus preserving “being”.On the one hand,visible images stick to their “being” by means of “telling stories” and “refusing to be explained”;On the other hand,present but not seen things or people strive to become “visible” by showing their own survival process and growth process in paintings.Specifically,visible images include “story-telling photos” and“paintings that refuse to be interpreted”.By telling a story of its existence,“story-telling photos” can resist the passage of time and the crushing of human subjectivity by history,thus preserving their own being;The“painting that refuses to be interpreted” not only rejects metaphors and symbols,but also rejects the beautification and belittling attached to itself by others,which shows its original appearance by the painting.Unlike visible images,which insist on their own being,things present but not seen strive to become“visible”,thus showing their own being.Here according to Berger,it is the farmers who are present but not seen.He turned his attention to the “absent” farmers and the “past” that was present.The philosophical significance of this practice lies in the call of “subjectivity”.The political intention of this practice is the effort to “resist” to be objectified.It can be said that,by describing itself,images not only preserve their own being,but also solve the puzzle of “visibility of being” in a visual way.Finally,the change of viewing mode enables us to seek “being”.“Perspective” and “perceptual experience” are two different ways to watch “being”.On this basis,Berger discusses a new way of watch:the photographic viewing.Photography breaks the elitism tendency of art,and accepts all visible things equally,thus making something marginal and obscured to be something visible.This new way of viewing loosens the “visible order” with “invisible” power,thus providing a possibility of resistance and liberation.Different viewing methods reflect different social and political attitudes.If “photographic viewing” is to resist and break the old order,then “bipartite gaze” is to construct a new order,which calls for more equal“intersubjectivity”.Berger advances on the basis of “photographic viewing”,that is,he develops the problem of bipartite gaze.On this issue,his and Merleau-Ponty’s ideas converges.For this two thinkers,in the interlacing of “watching” and “being watched”,we not only understand the similarities,but also the irreplaceable differences between us and others.It can be said that,in Berger’s view,visual art has never brought a pure aesthetic experience,on the contrary,visual art plays the role of political practice.On the one hand,Berger criticizes the photographic works with ideology by analyzing the ontological significance of photography.On the other hand,Berger illustrates the resistance and liberation function of photography: photos can preserve and awaken viewers’ emotional experiences and memories,thus stimulating their actions.According to this,Berger hopes to transfer this function of private photography to public photography,so as to widely relate the common emotional experience of human beings with social and historical memories.In public photography,private and individual experiences are connected into social collective experiences,which can stimulate a kind of social force.However,Berger’s photographic expectation can only be a utopian fantasy of some aesthetic politics.The matter is,can his thinking about photography really change the reality? Critics expresses their harsh positions and radical political attitudes with their understanding of visual artworks,but they did not produce actual political and social effects in the end.Any Marxist is well aware of the importance of practical action,and Berger is no exception.However,he did not point out what actions should be taken after photography stimulates social forces.Or the matter is the collective experience inspired by photography really practical? In fact,Berger’s political expectation of photography can only be delayed in a long “watching”. |
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