Ways of Seeing
A terrific series of essays that barely show their age after fifty years, and whose only criticism could be a lack of persuasive cohesion across their contents.
I don't have much to say about Berger's description and depiction of the male gaze, a thesis so powerful that reading the essay defining it feels obvious in retrospect, but I thought his final two essays — in which he first argues that the primary goal of oil paintings are to depict and consummate the wealth of landed gentry as an aspirational object, and then argues that advertisements have succeeded in doing the same — were particularly insightful, and made even keener in the half-century following their initial publication.
(Pithier, letterboxd-style review: "RIP John Berger you would have loved instagram influencers")