About Looking
Citation
Berger, John. About Looking. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980. 198 pp. ISBN 0-394-73655-7.
UK edition: London: Writers and Readers, 1980.
Essays collected from periodical publications of the 1970s, primarily written for New Society and other venues, 1970–1979.
Relevance
The collection that most directly engages photography as a social and political practice within the tradition that The Family of Man represents. The essay “Uses of Photography” (written in response to Sontag’s On Photography) is the most directly relevant: Berger accepts Sontag’s critique of photography’s political demobilizing function but proposes a counter-practice of politically motivated photographic archives. The essay “Paul Strand” and others address the documentary tradition that Family of Man drew from. About Looking thus represents both a critique of and an attempted recuperation of the humanist-documentary tradition.
Tier 2: same grounds as src-berger-1972-ways-of-seeing. Essays written during the 1970s and collected in 1980; the collection date places this entry in the 1980s decade folder, but the work’s intellectual formation is continuous with the 1970s critical moment.
Key excerpts / pages
- Access status (2026-04-30): Internet Archive URL
https://archive.org/details/aboutlooking00berg— WebFetch not permitted in this session; URL not fetched. Body text NOT consulted in this round. - “Uses of Photography”: essay title carried from secondary citation in photography-theory literature; page range NOT verified in this round.
- The “Uses of Photography” essay is widely cited as Berger’s response to Sontag’s On Photography (
src-sontag-1977) — this attribution is carried from secondary literature, not verified against the primary text in this round. - Cross-reference to
src-sandeen-1995: Sandeen’s study is the anchor for Family of Man reception — NOT re-fetched in this round.
Notes
- “Uses of Photography” is the key essay for cross-reference to Family of Man reception. If a physical copy of About Looking is consulted, this entry should be updated with precise page numbers.
- The collection’s 1980 publication date stretches the “1970s” scope slightly; the essays were written in the 1970s. Per the batch brief: “The cutoff for ‘1970s’ can stretch to 1980 for end-of-decade compilations.” This entry is filed under 1980s for year-folder consistency.
- Cross-reference to
src-berger-1972-ways-of-seeing(earlier Berger, 1970s entry). Cross-reference tosrc-sontag-1977(the target of “Uses of Photography”). Cross-reference tosrc-sekula-1981(parallel materialist-critique tradition). - Cross-reference to
src-sandeen-1995: anchor for Family of Man reception history. verified: false: Internet Archive URL not fetched; body text NOT consulted in this round. Title, author, year, publisher, and ISBN carried from standard bibliographic citation, not from a primary fetch.