Ways of Seeing (Penguin Modern Classics)

The purpose of publicity is to make the spectator marginally dissatisfied with his present way of life.

Publicity begins by working on a natural appetite for pleasure.

No other kind of relic or text from the past can offer such a direct testimony about the world which surrounded other people at other times. In this respect images are more precise and richer than literature.

(Men in seventeenth-century Holland wore their hats on the side of their heads in order to be thought of as adventurous and pleasure-loving.

Images were first made to conjure up the appearances of something that was absent. Gradually it became evident that an image could outlast what it represented; it then showed how something or somebody had once looked – and thus by implication how the subject had once been seen by other people. Later still the specific vision of the image-maker was

thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule over thee’.

the publicity image steals her love of herself as she is, and offers it back to her for the price of the product.

When a painting is reproduced by a film camera it inevitably becomes material for the film-maker’s argument.

It recognizes nothing except the power to acquire.