Chapter 1 of Ways of Seeing by John Berger

John Berger argues that seeing is a fundamental human experience that precedes and differs from language—while we explain the world through words, they can never fully capture what we perceive visually. He emphasizes that seeing is not passive reception but an active choice; we look at relationships between things and ourselves, and our vision is shaped by our beliefs, knowledge, and experiences. All images, including photographs, are human constructions that embody a particular way of seeing rather than objective representations of reality.