#john-berger — Public Fediverse posts
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Edward Curtin Honors His Late Mother.
Article republished by Jerry Alatalo | May 10, 2026
[Editor’s note: Edward Curtin writes about his late mother: “She never developed the conventional shell that allows most people to hide their true feelings. She was a raw nerve, and had a nerve, and this could unnerve others who were content with euphemisms.”
All those who honor their mothers (whether still among the living or passed away) on Mothers Day will truly appreciate Mr. Curtin’s extraordinary gift of articulating the heart of the matter when it comes to successfully obtaining authentic happiness – while navigating from birth-to-death inside the human skin. For generously offering that, his amazing gift, to others, Edward Curtin earns great respect, support, honor and gratitude.
Happy Mothers Day. Peace.]
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Rita Mary Rose: A Mother, an Artist and a Soul Still Speaking
Edward Curtin
While days like Mother’s Day are corny, they do elicit memories. I think of my mother. She died at the age of 100. Although she was quite debilitated at the time, she still kept asking me not to let her go, as if I had such power. She was afraid of death, but when I looked at her photo this morning, I felt she wasn’t dead or buried in Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York where thirteen years ago we placed her next to our father and her husband Edward of sixty years.
“The dead don’t stay where they are buried,” the English writer John Berger’s mother tells him when he sees her in Lisbon seated on a park bench fifteen years after her death. Here Is Where We Meet is the book where you can read of this encounter and more. And there is much more, as when John remembers his mother saying to him when he was thirteen years-old, “Most people, she said, can’t stand the truth. It’s too bad but there it is, most people can’t stand it. You, John, I think you can bear the truth, we’ll see. Time will tell. I didn’t reply.”
When I spoke to my mother this morning, she told me to not make it public because people will think I am crazy. She was always worried that I would put myself in danger by saying or doing controversial things. But she knew also that I would not heed her advice and she was glad for that as well – secretly. When I told her what Berger’s mother said to him, she said, “Of course she was right. Would you stay buried there?”
It didn’t seem appealing, but I didn’t answer her.
“Where are you now?” I asked her.
“Don’t be too nosy, Eddy,” she said.
“I always want to know everything,” I said.
“There are some things best left alone. You are in one side of the world and I am in another. Let’s leave it at that.”
“Don’t you remember when I gave the eulogy at your funeral and I said you had a favorite saying about how the truth shall make you free?”
“I remember, but you also recalled my other favorite about being true to your own self, and I feel where I am at the moment would be of no help to you. I get around.”
Okay, Mom, but would you agree with what I more or less said about you in my eulogy? It went something like this: My mother was an artist at heart, and being an artist, she possessed all the bittersweet attributes that come with such a gift. She never developed the conventional shell that allows most people to hide their true feelings. She was a raw nerve, and had a nerve, and this could unnerve others who were content with euphemisms. But she was also a thwarted actress, and this complicated everything, for when an artist/actress has few opportunities to express themselves, a frustration seeps in. My mother suffered from such frustration, and it was sad. (It’s called being an artiste-manque by the great Otto Rank, the Austrian psychoanalyst, who in his masterpiece, Art and the Artist wrote: “The artist does not create, in the first place, for fame or immortality; his production is to be a means to achieve actual life, since it helps him to overcome fear.”)
“Yes, my dear son, I was afraid of something I couldn’t name and it haunted me. It goes back to many things when I was young, maybe thirteen years-old, and my father, with whom my mother and I didn’t live until I was ten and I had never met till then, put his policeman’s gun on the table and threatened us to obey him or else. The ‘else’ entered me and never left. He stood in my way then, and my mother’s sticking with him after really frightened me. I wanted to live my own life, but he thwarted me at every turn and my mother suffered through it as an accomplice because she too was afraid.”
Then I was right to say about you that in your pilgrim soul you always suffered from faith and doubt, hope and despair, and “she fleetingly wished to be blissfully ignorant, But that was not her destiny. She wanted more. She knew that so-called blissful-ignorance was beneath her dignity. She had soul, and as the poet John Keats wrote, ‘This life is a vale of soul-making,’ and Rita Mary Rose struggled mightily in that endeavor.”
I heard you then, Eddy, and I felt so close to you for grasping my struggles. I remember you also said that as an artist of life, a great mother – I gave birth to “nine children, losing three of them along the way – a heartache impossible to grasp, and that the artist in her, the seeker that she was, wanted more.” You said it perfectly, as I remember well, you also said that I loved and nurtured you all as best I could. That is so true. I did my utmost best, but I know it wasn’t perfect. After a twenty year span of being pregnant and giving birth from the age twenty-two, and another twenty of raising all of you, I wanted to give birth to the parts of me that lay fallow. You were right to say that I wished, maybe unconsciously, especially for your sisters, that they live out the parts of me that fate and circumstances and fear prevented me from achieving. My dreams for them were quite superficial – to be discovered for their looks by some Hollywood mogul – for so much was focused on their appearance, as mine was for me.
I know you were frustrated, and when we were all grown and gone you hoped for more. But like John Berger’s mother you had that favorite phrase: “it’s too late.” You were saying that when you were in your mid-fifties and had so long to live. It’s never too late, I always thought, for time is always present, but time is the enemy when looks are emphasized, but you even escaped that fate. You were a beautiful woman into old age. Yet looks need accomplishments and they demand the courage to create, and fear needs to be overcome for that. Sentimentality won’t do it, and you got a bit sentimental with some of your paintings as you aged.
You were not the grandmotherly type, and while it irritated me, I understood it. You were an artist with a soul and needed more than the mother title. You wanted to use your poetic and artistic abilities to create a new life beyond that of only mother and grandmother. Some us found that hard to accept even though it was obvious.
As your favorite son – an appellation unearned since there was no competition – I want to honor you for all your strivings for a second and third life. You deserve it. You suffered and struggled for it. You wanted to turn the world you saw with your beautiful eyes into a beautiful painting, a poem to touch the soul.
Your great gift to us was your effort, your internal struggles, your failures and successes. You were a work of art, always in the making, never arriving.
Where are you now, Mother? I love and miss you. Your poem about Dad resonates.
But she was silent and just looked at me and smiled.
I Wish
By Rita Curtin
I wish that I could turn back the clock
But not to long ago.
Content I’d be if I could see and hear my loved ones calling me.
Oh Mama dear, I dream of you
In everything I see,
If only I could hold your hands
That lovingly held me.
And Ed my dear, I can’t forget
A wondrous man I dream of yet.My mother at Ninety.
Edward Curtin: Sociologist, researcher, poet, essayist, journalist, novelist….writer – beyond a cage of categories. His latest book is AT THE LOST AND FOUND: Personal & Political Dispatches of Resistance and Hope (Clarity Press).
(Source: ScheerPost.com)
#Art #ArtistActivism #JohnBerger #MothersDay #Philosophy -
Crowds and Lovers | Ben Lerner | The New York Review of Books
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/04/09/crowds-and-lovers-g-john-berger/
#JohnBerger
#BenLerner -
The New Way of Seeing: In Anya Berger's Archives by Emily Foister
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2025/12/18/the-new-way-of-seeing-in-anya-bergers-archives/
#AnyaBerger
#JohnBerger -
John Berger: Ways of Learning by Iona Heath, 2024
Iona Heath relates the importance that John Berger's work and friendship had on her working life as a GP. It includes extracts from letters that span 20 years of her correspondence with John Berger.
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John Berger: Understanding a Photograph by John Berger (PDF)
Author: John Berger
File Type: PDF
Download at https://sci-books.com/john-berger-understanding-a-photograph-1597112569/
#Photography, #JohnBerger -
“Seeing comes before words”*…
Five years ago, (R)D featured John Berger’s award-winning– and more to the point, hugely-influential– television series Ways of Seeing (in some ways a response to Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation series). The broadcast was followed by an adaptation of Berger’s scripts that became a book of the same name.
Now that hugely influential work is available in a gorgeous web version…
Based on the 1972 BBC series and comprised of 7 essays, 3 of which are entirely pictoral, Ways of Seeing is a seminal work which examines how we view art…
A beautiful new way to enjoy (and learn from) a classic: “Ways of Seeing“
* John Berger (the first line of Ways of Seeing)
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As we ponder perspective, we might pause to celebrate the induction, on this date in 2005, into the the National Toy Hall of Fame of a plaything that invites constant creativity– the cardboard box.
#art #cardboardBox #civilization #culture #history #JohnBerger #KennethClark #literature #NationalToyHallOfFame #philosophy #toys #WaysOfSeeing
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Dziś przypada rocznica urodzin Johna Bergera (1926–2017), autora "Ways of Seeing", który swoją twórczością zmienił sposób myślenia o obrazie, wizualności i sztuce. Był nie tylko pisarzem i krytykiem, ale także malarzem i poetą – połączenie, które uczyniło jego refleksje tak głębokimi i niebanalnymi.
(fot. Wikipedia)
#JohnBerger #sztuka #kultura -
John Berger oder Die Kunst des Sehens
Ways of Seeing war eine Fernsehserie der BBC, die aus visuellen Essays bestand, die Fragen zu versteckten Ideologien in visuellen Bildern aufwarfen. Die Serie führte später zu einem gleichnamigen Buch von John Berger.
Man könnte leicht sagen, dass „Ways of Seeing“ hoffnungslos veraltet ist – die 1972 entstandenen Filme wirken wie eine puritanisch-groovige Mischung aus Monty Python, der Open University und den „Look Around You“-Parodien. Und doch ist das Bemerkenswerte an dieser Serie, dass sie passender, subversiver und zum Nachdenken anregender denn je erscheint. Das Großbritannien, das wir in den Filmen sehen, das bereits durch die unheimliche Musik von Delia Derbyshire aus dem BBC Radiophonic Workshop entfremdet ist, wird durch den Lauf der Zeit noch weiter entfremdet. Entfremdet im brechtischen Sinne, auf nützliche Weise: Wir betrachten eine kapitalistische Gesellschaft, die unserer eigenen ähnelt und ihr doch nicht gleicht. UBU WEB
Episode 1: Psychological Aspects
Episode 3: Collectors and Collecting
#Augen #BBC #DieKunstDesSehens #Fernsehen #JohnBerger #Kunst #Sehen #UBUWEB #Wissen
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walls, wars & wisdom.
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John Berger – Bentos Skizzenbuch (2)
Das ökonomische System produziert neben dem Reichtum immer mehr Armut, immer mehr obdachlose Familien, während es gleichzeitig politische Ideologien propagiert, die den Ausschluss und letztendlich die Ausmerzung der Horden neuer Armer formulieren und rechtfertigen.
Es ist dieser Teufelskreis von Politik und Wirtschaft, der heute das menschliche Vermögen zur Grausamkeit verstärkt, das jede menschliche. Vorstellungskraft übersteigt. (Seite 83)
#Armut #Ökonomie #BentosSkizzenbuch #Grausamkeit #JohnBerger #Politik #Reichtum #Wirtschaft #Zettel
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John Berger – Bentos Skizzenbuch (1)
Der Abstand zwischen den Armen und relativ Vermögenden wird zu einem Abgrund. Traditionelle Beschränkungen und Empfehlungen werden in den Wind geschlagen. Die Konsumgesellschaft zehrt alle Fragen auf. Die Vergangenheit wird obsolet. In der Folge verlieren die Menschen ihr Selbst, das Gefühl für ihre Identität, und dann spüren sie den Feind auf, um sich selbst zu definieren. Und dieser Feind – ganz egal, welcher ethnischen oder religiösen Zugehörigkeit – ist immer unter den Ärmsten zu finden.
#Arme #BentosSkizzenbuch #JohnBerger #Konsum #Materialismus #Reiche #Selbstverlust #Zitat
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när man gör en synundersökning och beställer två par glasögon för mindre pengar än man trodde, får man beställa supernördig facklitteratur i present åt sig själv.
det här är så sjukt jävla assexigt, så ni fattar inte. det är hjärnorgasm efter hjärnorgasm, bara tanken på det. detta är det närmaste jag kommer till att ha en fetisch.
#fototeori #johnberger #filosofi #immanuelkant #michelfoucault #detsublima #vansinnet
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> Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32233
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/32233/pg32233-images.html
This #WBYeats poem is 1 of 2 texts #ChrisKillip's #InFlagrante, #JohnBerger says in #UnderstandingAPhotograph -
Solidarity with Palestine: Free Resources and Further Reading
Free ebooks including Ilan Pappe's Ten Myths About Israel and Gideon Levy's The Punishment of Gaza.
#gaza #GazaGenocide #israel #palestine #IsraeliOccupation #apartheid #WestBank #nakba #history #histodon #books #bookstodon #ebooks #zionism #hamas #IDF #HumanRights #IlanPappe #GideonLevy #EdwardSaid #AntonyLowenstein #NormanFinkelstein #NoamChomsky #RashidKhalidi #AngelaDavis #JohnBerger
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> Old Man Grayson, that stubborn old coot, refuses to use those new-fangled machines in his mill. “It just ain’t natch’rl.” “He’s a horse drawn man until his dying day.”
#LangdonWinner on #RodStewart and #CountryComforts which I think is a song on the album #GasolineAlley which I imagine is before #BlondesHaveMoreFun ? #OldManGrayson may have seen the end of their Country Comforts by spending on machines, like a #JohnBerger #PigEarth character saw a free tractor.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/gasoline-alley-188009/ -
> John Berger wrote, True translation is not a binary affair between two languages but a triangular affair. The third point of the triangle being what lay behind the words of the original text before it was written. True translation demands a return to the pre-verbal.
> Between the English translation I offered, and the urgency I felt typing ‘Aha Makav in the lines above, is not the point where this story ends or begins.
#JohnBerger #OnTranslation -
Ways of Teething, with apologies to #JohnBerger
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excerpt from John Berger’s ‘Why Look at Animals?’
https://pdbowman.studio/briefs/11-jun-23-john-berger-grandville-disney-animals-disappearance-about-looking/#JohnBerger #AboutLooking #animal #anthropomorphic #metaphor #Grandville #Disney #blog
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> ... this peasant tradition..[is] often heretical and subversive. “Don’t run away from anything,” says the Russian peasant proverb, “but don’t do anything.”.... the peasantry everywhere can be defined as a class of survivors. For a century and a half now the tenacious ability of peasants to survive has confounded administrators and theorists...
1979!!! #JohnBerger in the Introduction to #PigEarth and the other two books in the #PeasantTrilogy #Peasants #Survivors #PeasantTradition
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@kendraleonard
well i guess it could be 🧐 As #JohnBerger wrote there are many "WaysOfSeeing" #swanlake 🤸 😸 -
A gorgeous post #animals #human #connectedness #friday #JohnBerger #photos #animalrights #animalrescue #companion #photoessay
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> The eyes of an animal when they consider a man are attentive and wary. The same animal may well look at other species in the same way. He does not reserve a special look for man. But by no other species except man will the animal’s look be recognised as familiar. Other animals are held by the look.
Man becomes aware of himself returning the look.
https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/04/01/why-look-at-animals-john-berger-about-looking/
#MariaPopova #TheMarginalian quotes #JohnBerger's #AboutLooking #WhyLookAtAnimals #AnimalViews #動物視線 -
> ... what concerns Berger is the loss of a meaningful connection to nature, a connection that can now only be rediscovered through the experience of beauty: "the aesthetic moment offers hope." Berger's writing is wonderfully physical, with a powerful sense of how things look, smell, feel.... the aesthetic key to unlock the true order of things.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/sep/19/why-look-animals-john-berger
#JohnBerger #AboutLooking #AnimalViews #動物視線 -
> The animal scrutinises him across a narrow abyss of non-comprehension. This is why the man can surprise the animal. Yet the animal — even if domesticated — can also surprise the man. The man too is looking across a similar, but not identical, abyss of non-comprehension. And this is so wherever he looks. He is always looking across ignorance and fear. And so, when he is being seen by the animal, he is being seen as his surroundings are seen by him.
#JohnBerger #AboutLooking #鈴木邦弘 #動物視線 -
Dipping back into Kimmerer, Berger, Snyder and Haraway for a thing I'm writing.
I find it weird when people DON'T see the world as alive, as a subject, not an object.
Were you raised to see the world around you as alive, and important, or as something external over which you should impose your will?
#braidingsweetgrass #garysnyder #donnaharaway #johnberger
