Answer: When we inhabit the world, we are constantly seeing. Perception is an ongoing reality—we are always taking in the world, and only after the fact do we name it. Thus begins Ways of Seeing, drawing our attention to the fraught relationship between vision, images, words, and meaning. Our understanding of what we see doesn't generally align with the objective facts of what we're seeing: for example, we see the sun set every night, while we know that it isn't really "setting," but rather, the earth is simply revolving away from it. Likewise, we can attempt to capture what we see, reproducing or recreating it for others so that they can try to understand how we perceive the world. To do so is to create an image: "an image is a sight which has been recreated or reproduced." In so doing, we remove the image from the original circumstances under which it was seen. In this sense, every image embodies what Berger calls "a way of seeing": a record of how its creator saw the world. Images can preserve things as they once were, and simultaneously, preserve how their creator once saw their subject. Images, more so than any other relics from the past, offer a direct testimony as to how people saw—and, by extension, understood—the world.
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