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超過一個世紀以來，攝影師及其辯護者們一直主張攝影應被視為一種純藝術。很難確定這些辯護是否成功。確實，大多數人並不認為攝影是一種藝術，即使他們在實踐、享受、使用和重視它。辯護者們的論點（包括我自己也曾在其中）有點學術化。
現在看來很清楚，攝影不應被視為一種純藝術。看起來攝影（無論它是什麼類型的活動）將比我們自文藝復興以來所認為的繪畫和雕塑更為長壽。幸運的是，少數博物館有足夠的主動性去開設攝影部門，這意味著鮮有照片會被保存在神聖的隔絕之中，這也意味著公眾並未認為任何照片超越了他們。（博物館的功能就像是貴族之家，在某些時間開放給公眾參觀。一旦一件作品被擺在博物館，它便獲得了一種排除大眾的生活方式的神秘感。）
讓我說清楚。繪畫和雕塑如我們所知，並不是死於任何風格上的病變，也不是那些職業驚駭者診斷的文化頹廢；它們之所以在死亡，是因為在當今世界，沒有任何藝術作品可以生存而不變成一種有價值的財產。而這意味著繪畫和雕塑的死亡，因為產權，如今不可避免地與所有其他價值相對立。人們相信產權，但本質上他們只相信財產所帶來的保護幻覺。所有純藝術作品，無論其內容如何，無論觀眾的個人情感如何，現在都必須被視為只是世界保守精神的信心道具。
從本質上講，照片幾乎沒有或完全沒有產權價值，因為它們不具稀缺性的價值。攝影的基本原則是它所產出的圖像不是獨一無二的，而是相反地可以無限複製。因此，以二十世紀的觀點來看，照片是所見事物的記錄。我們應該將它們視為與心電圖一樣遠離藝術品。這樣我們將更少陷入幻覺。我們的錯誤在於通過考慮創作過程的某些階段來將事物分類為藝術品。但邏輯上這會使所有人造物品都成為藝術品。更有用的是根據其社會功能來分類藝術。它作為財產功能。因此，照片大多在此類別之外。
照片見證了人在特定情況下行使的選擇。照片是攝影師決定值得記錄這特定事件或特定物體被看到的結果。如果存在的一切都被不斷地拍攝，每張照片都會變得毫無意義。照片既不慶祝事件本身，也不慶祝視覺本身。照片已經是一條關於所記錄事件的訊息。這訊息的緊迫性並不完全取決於事件的緊迫性，但也不可能完全獨立於事件。最簡單的情況下，解碼後的訊息是：我已決定這個場景值得記錄。這對非常難忘的照片和最平淡的快照同樣適用。區別在於照片解釋訊息的程度，以及照片使攝影師的決定透明和可理解的程度。因此，我們來到照片這個鮮為人知的悖論。照片是通過光的介導對特定事件的自動記錄：然而它利用該事件來解釋其記錄。攝影是使觀察變得自覺的過程。
我們必須擺脫因不斷將攝影與純藝術比較而引起的混淆。每本攝影手冊都談到構圖。好的照片是構圖好的。然而這只有在我們認為照片圖像模仿繪畫圖像時才是正確的。繪畫是一種安排的藝術：因此，要求安排的東西有某種秩序是合理的。繪畫中的每種形式之間的關係在某種程度上都可以適應畫家的目的。這並不適用於攝影。（除非我們包括那些荒謬的工作室作品，在這些作品中，攝影師在拍照前安排了主題的每一個細節。）構圖在詞的深刻形成意義上不能進入攝影。
照片的形式安排無法解釋任何東西。所描繪的事件本身是神秘的或根據觀眾在看到照片前對它們的了解來解釋的。那麼，什麼賦予照片作為照片的意義？什麼使其最低限度的訊息——我已決定這個場景值得記錄——變得宏大而生動？
照片的實際內容是看不見的，因為它源自於一場演繹，不是形式，而是時間。一個人可能會說攝影與音樂一樣接近繪畫。我說過，照片見證了人選擇的行使。這種選擇不是在拍攝甲和乙之間選擇：而是在甲時刻拍攝或乙時刻拍攝之間選擇。任何照片中記錄的物體（從最有效的到最平凡的）承載的重量和說服力大致相同。變化的是我們意識到缺席與存在兩極的強度。攝影在這兩極之間找到其真正的意義。（照片最受歡迎的用途是作為缺席的紀念品。）
一張照片，在記錄所見事物的同時，總是也本質上指向未見之物。它隔離、保存並呈現從連續體中抽取的一刻。一幅畫的力量取決於它的內在參照。它對繪畫表面之外的自然世界的引用從來都不是直接的；它以等價物進行交易。或者，換句話說：繪畫解釋世界，將其轉化為自己的語言。但攝影沒有自己的語言。一個人學會閱讀照片就像學會閱讀腳印或心電圖。攝影處理的語言是事件的語言。它所有的參照都在它之外。因此是逐漸演變的。
電影導演可以像畫家操縱所描繪事件的匯合點一樣操縱時間。靜態攝影師則不然。他唯一能做的決定是他選擇隔絕的時刻。然而這種表面的限制賦予照片其獨特的力量。它所展示的喚起了未展示的。任何人只要看一張照片就能體會到這一點。所展示與未展示之間的直接關係對每張照片都是獨特的：可能是冰對太陽，悲傷對悲劇，微笑對快樂，身體對愛，勝出的賽馬對所參加的賽事。
當照片所記錄的選定時刻包含一定程度的普遍適用的真理時，照片就是有效的，它既能揭示照片中缺少的內容，也能揭示照片中存在的內容。這個真理定量的性質及其可辨別方式各不相同。它可以在表情、行動、並置、視覺歧義、配置中找著。而且這真理永遠不可能與觀眾無關。對於口袋裡有女友Polyfoto照片*的人來說，在「非個人」照片中找到的真理定量仍然取決於觀眾心中已有的總類別。*【附註：這種單鏡頭相機可以重複在玻璃板底片上進行四十八次曝光。】
所有這些似乎與將特定轉化為普遍的古老藝術原則相近。但攝影不處理構造。攝影沒有轉化，只有決定，只有焦點。照片的最低限度訊息可能比我們最初想的更不簡單。與其說是：我已決定這個場景值得記錄，我們現在可能解碼為：我相信這值得一看的程度可以通過我自願不展示的全部內容來判斷，因為這些內容都包含在其中。
為什麼要以這種方式使我們每天多次看到照片的體驗變得複雜？因為我們通常對待體驗的簡單性是浪費和混亂的。我們認為照片是藝術品，是特定事實的證據，是肖像，是新聞報導。事實上，每張照片都是測試、確認和建立現實整體圖景的一種手段。因此，攝影在意識形態鬥爭中發揮著至關重要的作用。因此，我們有必要瞭解一種我們可以使用並且可以用來對付我們的武器。
1968年10月
【註】以上內容由本人分別採用ChatGPT 3.0聊天機器和Google Translation譯出。原作是英文，收入氏著書題同為Understanding
a Photograph之合集。
John Berger: Understanding a Photograph
For over a century, photographers and their apologists have argued that photography deserves to be considered a fine art. It is hard to know how far the apologetics have succeeded. Certainly, the vast majority of people do not consider photography an art, even while they practice, enjoy, use and value it. The argument of apologists (and I myself have been among them) has been a little academic.
It now seems clear that photography deserves to be considered as though it were not a fine art. It looks as though photography (whatever kind of activity it may be) is going to outlive painting and sculpture as we have thought of them since the Renaissance. It now seems fortunate that few museums have had sufficient initiative to open photographic departments, for it means that few photographs have been preserved in sacred isolation, it means that the public have not come to think of any photographs as being beyond them. (Museums function like homes of the nobility to which the public at certain hours are admitted as visitors. The class nature of the 'nobility' may vary, but as soon as a work is placed in a museum it acquires the mystery of a way of life which excludes the mass.)
Let me be clear. Painting and sculpture as we know them are not dying of any stylistic disease, of anything diagnosed by the professionally horrified as cultural decadence; they are dying because, in the world as it is, no work of art can survive and not become a valuable property. And this implies the death of painting and sculpture because property, as once it was not, is now inevitably opposed to all other values. People believe in property, but in essence they only believe in the illusion of protection which property gives. All works of fine art, whatever their content, whatever the sensibility of an individual spectator, must now be reckoned as no more than props for the confidence of the world spirit of conservatism.
By their nature, photographs have little or no property value because they have no rarity value. The very principle of photography is that the resulting image is not unique, but on the contrary infinitely reproducible. Thus, in twentieth-century terms, photographs are records of things seen. Let us consider them no closer to works of art than cardiograms. We shall then be freer of illusions. Our mistake has been to categorize things as art by considering certain phases of the process of creation. But logically this can make all man-made objects art. It is more useful to categorize art by what has become its social function. It functions as property. Accordingly, photographs are mostly outside the category.
Photographs bear witness to a human choice being exercised in a given situation. A photograph is a result of the photographer's decision that it is worth recording that this particular event or this particular object has been seen. If everything that existed were continually being photographed, every photograph would become meaningless. A photograph celebrates neither the event itself nor the faculty of sight in itself. A photograph is already a message about the event it records. The urgency of this message is not entirely dependent on the urgency of the event, but neither can it be entirely independent from it. At its simplest, the message, decoded, means: I have decided that seeing this is worth recording.
This is equally true of very memorable photographs and the most banal snapshots. What distinguishes the one from the other is the degree to which the photograph explains the message, the degree to which the photograph makes the photographer's decision transparent and comprehensible. Thus, we come to the little-understood paradox of the photograph. The photograph is an automatic record through the mediation of light of a given event: yet it uses the given event to explain its recording. Photography is the process of rendering observation self-conscious.
We must rid ourselves of a confusion brought about by continually comparing photography with the fine arts. Every handbook on photography talks about composition. The good photograph is the well-composed one. Yet this is true only in so far as we think of photographic images imitating painted ones. Painting is an art of arrangement: therefore, it is reasonable to demand that there is some kind of order in what is arranged. Every relation between forms in a painting is to some degree adaptable to the painter's purpose. This is not the case with photography. (Unless we include those absurd studio works in which the photographer arranges every detail of his subject before he takes the picture.) Composition in the profound, formative sense of the word cannot enter into photography.
The formal arrangement of a photograph explains nothing. The events portrayed are in themselves mysterious or explicable according to the spectator's knowledge of them prior to his seeing the photograph. What then gives the photograph as photograph meaning? What makes its minimal message - I have decided that seeing this is worth recording – large and vibrant?
The true content of a photograph is invisible, for it derives from a play, not with form, but with time. One might argue that photography is as close to music as to painting. I have said that a photograph bears witness to a human choice being exercised. This choice is not between photographing X and Y: but between photographing at X moment or at Y moment. The objects recorded in any photograph (from the most effective to the most commonplace) carry approximately the same weight, the same conviction. What varies is the intensity with which we are made aware of the poles of absence and presence. Between these two poles photography finds its proper meaning. (The most popular use of the photograph is as a memento of the absent.)
A photograph, while recording what has been seen, always and by its nature refers to what is not seen. It isolates, preserves and presents a moment taken from a continuum. The power of a painting depends upon its internal references. Its reference to the natural world beyond the limits of the painted surface is never direct; it deals in equivalents. Or, to put it another way: painting interprets the world, translating it into its own language. But photography has no language of its own. One learns to read photographs as one learns to read footprints or cardiograms. The language in which photography deals is the language of events. All its references are external to itself. Hence the continuum.
A movie director can manipulate time as a painter can manipulate the confluence of the events he depicts. Not so the still photographer. The only decision he can take is as regards the moment he chooses to isolate. Yet this apparent limitation gives the photograph its unique power. What it shows invokes what is not shown. One can look at any photograph to appreciate the truth of this. The immediate relation between what is present and what is absent is particular to each photograph: it may be that of ice to sun, of grief to a tragedy, of a smile to a pleasure, of a body to love, of a winning race-horse to the race it has run.
A photograph is effective when the chosen moment which it records contains a quantum of truth which is generally applicable, which is as revealing about what is absent from the photograph as about what is present in it. The nature of this quantum of truth, and the ways in which it can be discerned, vary greatly. It may be found in an expression, an action, a juxtaposition, a visual ambiguity, a configuration. Nor can this truth ever be independent of the spectator. For the man with a Polyfoto of his girl in his pocket, the quantum of truth in an 'impersonal' photograph must still depend upon the general categories already in the spectator's mind.
All this may seem close to the old principle of art transforming the particular into the universal. But photography does not deal in constructs. There is no transforming in photography. There is only decision, only focus. The minimal message of a photograph may be less simple than we first thought. Instead of it being: I have decided that seeing this is worth recording, we may now decode it as: The degree to which I believe this is worth looking at can be judged by all that I am willingly not showing because it is contained within it.
Why complicate in this way an experience which we have many times every day the experience of looking at a photograph? Because the simplicity with which we usually treat the experience is wasteful and confusing. We think of photographs as works of art, as evidence of a particular truth, as likenesses, as news items. Every photograph is in fact a means of testing, confirming and constructing a total view of reality. Hence the crucial role of photography in ideological struggle. Hence the necessity of our understanding a weapon which we can use and which can be used against us.
October 1968
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