Image Isn't Everything

In his essay “Ways of Seeing,” John Berger makes the claim that, “images are more precise and richer than literature.” Berger claims that as a means of communicating and connecting with the past, visual art is more effective than literature. This is not necessarily true. Visual art can show us what people of the past saw, but it can not show us how they saw it or what they thought about it. When we look at a painting of an object, we have no way of knowing why the artist chose to paint it. Was it because it was something extraordinary? Or was it an ordinary object? Literature is a peek directly into the mind of the author. Through it, we can tell what was extraordinary and what they took for granted. Further more, a verbal description can communicate the meaning of an image that may not translate from one individual to another or one century to another. The image of a cross or Star of David may not mean as much to us as it did to the people of a highly religious past, but the written description of religious fervor will communicate that feeling regardless. People have had the same range of emotions through out history and a well written piece of literature can evoke those emotions in a way that art cannot always do.
Berger also claims that a single image can have a more profound impact than a single word. This may be true for the individual, but not for the community. Perhaps the sight of a man’s lover will cause him an emotion that no word can, but that same image shown to someone else will mean nothing. On the other hand, the word “lover” carries such strong connotations with it that it can communicate all the feelings of that man at first sight of his lover in a single word. A single word can hold as much power as an image.