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1Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems2Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute3Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsJohn Berger matters to people who share and view images because Ways of Seeing offers a way to ask what an image is doing: who chose the view, how its placement changes its meaning, and what kind of life it invites us to want. Published in 1972, the book predates Instagram, Snapchat and whatever service the title means by “Shots.” Applying Berger to those platforms is a present-day reading of his ideas, not a claim that he analyzed or predicted them.
What Berger can teach us about looking
Ways of Seeing, first published in 1972 and based on a BBC television series, begins from a deceptively simple proposition: “Every image embodies a way of seeing.” John Berger makes the point in Chapter 1. An image is not a neutral window onto the world; it reflects choices about what to include, what to leave out and how to present what remains.
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That is true of a photograph as much as a painting. A photographer selects one view from countless possible sights. The finished image gives us the scene, but not the alternatives that were outside the frame. Berger’s idea is useful on image-sharing platforms precisely because a polished post can make those choices disappear.
Ask how the feed changes an image
Berger also argues that an image’s meaning changes with what appears beside it or after it. In Chapter 1, he writes: “The meaning of an image is changed according to what one sees immediately beside it or what comes immediately after it.” Reproduction frees images from their original settings and places them in new contexts; sequence and surroundings shape how viewers read them.
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A platform feed makes that question immediate. A photograph may be encountered between a friend’s post, an advertisement and a news image rather than in the context where it was made. The same image can read differently depending on that sequence. This is an application of Berger’s account of reproduced images, not a platform-specific claim he made.
- Who selected this view, and what has been left outside the frame?
- What appears immediately before and after it?
- Does the surrounding context change whether it feels personal, aspirational, commercial or documentary?
Look for the desire behind publicity
In Chapter 7, Berger turns to publicity and its relationship with social life. “Publicity is about social relations, not objects,” he writes. Advertising, in his account, sells more than a product: “Publicity proposes to each of us that we transform ourselves, or our lives, by buying something more.” Its promise is a changed identity or future, with the object offered as the means.
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That framework can help readers examine promotional images and the ideals they circulate. Ask what version of success, beauty, taste or belonging an image presents, and whether a product is being offered as a route to it. Berger also connects publicity with the visual authority historically associated with oil painting: advertising can borrow the look and status of art or culture to make its promises persuasive. These questions apply to contemporary image culture; they are not evidence that every post is an advertisement or that every platform works the same way.
Use Berger’s questions, not platform rankings
There is no basis here for ranking Instagram, Snapchat and “Shots” by how their images work. The name “Shots” is ambiguous, and comparable current platform statistics are not established. A more useful approach is to read an individual image or feed through Berger’s ideas:
- Selection: Who made or chose the image, and what other view could have been shown?
- Placement: What surrounds it, and how does its position or sequence affect its meaning?
- Social relations: What status, belonging or ideal life does it suggest?
- Publicity: Is there a commercial promise, explicit or implied, attached to the image?
- Imagined future: What does the image invite the viewer to believe they might become or experience?
A 2017 Guardian commentary makes a similar connection between Berger’s account of widely reproduced images and Facebook, Instagram and the broader internet. It is a secondary interpretation, not current platform evidence. The commentary also notes that some museum-attendance figures in Berger’s 1970s text now look dated, so those figures should not be treated as current.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Where to read Berger
The most direct way to engage with these arguments is to read Ways of Seeing itself, especially Chapters 1 and 7. The John Berger Estate says the book was first published in 1972 and was based on the BBC series; its page gives 38 as the number of languages into which the book has been translated. That is the Estate’s stated figure. Penguin Random House lists a print edition by John Berger, ISBN 9780140135152; catalog availability can change.
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