Abstract
A crime against design inspired this themed issue of the journal of visual culture.
When in London, I always browse through its remaining bookshops. Skoob Books, Compendium, the many small shops dotting the streets around Russell Square and up and down Charing Cross Road helped populate my bookshelves in the mid-to-late 1990s while a graduate student ‘up North’ at the University of Leeds.
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In February 2010 I popped into Zwemmer’s as trips to this bookshop along with Foyles and Blackwells are regular shopping destinations. Displayed prominently in close proximity to the cash register were members of the Penguin on Design Series: Susan Sontag’s On Photography, Deyan Sudjic’s The Language of Things, Marshall McLuhan, Quentin Fiore, and Jerome Agel’s triangulated work The Medium Is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects, and John Berger’s Ways of Seeing.
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I was not a happy shopper. And the young shop assistant’s insistence that they ‘look smashing’ didn’t persuade me. Penguin’s de-design – the intentional un-making of an existing design and a polite way to say ‘shitty design’ – of The Medium is the Massage drops the book’s subtitle from its redesigned cover. Plus one of the thumbs from the iconic full-bleed of photographed thumbs ‘holding’ the pages of
I am not the only one who finds Penguin’s design crimes unconscionable. Commenting on the Penguin on Design Series de-design of Ways of Seeing, the book’s original designer, Richard Hollis, notes that ‘when they reprinted it they also changed the cover type to upper- and lowercase Gill, which immediately made it horrible’ (Sisman, nd). Hollis, and fellow readers, might have weathered this typographic decision. The next de-design decision, however, is unforgivable as it utterly destroys the book’s attempt to denaturalize the act of seeing through its image–text composition. In the original book, Essay Number 1 informs its reader: ‘Paintings are often reproduced with words around them’ (Berger, 1972: 27). The reader is then given an assignment within the book’s pedagogic visual and material landscape. We are asked to look at the reproduction of van Gogh’s Wheatfield with Crows (1890) and, as is well known, instructed to ‘Then turn the page’ (p. 27).
Such page turning is not permitted in the de-designed version of Ways of Seeing. The request to ‘Then turn the page’ remains (now on page 20) but we have no page to actually turn! This request loses the meaningful punctuation that awaits the reader on the other side of the original page 27. In the de-designed version of Ways of Seeing, the medium of the book is flattened out to deny our physical interaction with the act of looking at carefully designed pages. No divide exists between the first image of van Gogh’s painting from the one that informs the reader that ‘This is the last picture that van Gogh painted before he killed himself’ (original, p. 28). The lessons of Ways of Seeing, particularly its examination of the politics of reproducibility and the importance of context for producing meaning, are lost on the de-designers of the 2008 version. It’s like offering a punch line in the same breath as the joke. No contemplative space is afforded. Surprise and shock are both forestalled. The de-designers simply do not get ‘it’. ‘It’ being the translation of a television performance to book performance (a static medium made kinetic); ‘it’ expressing Ways of Seeing’s visual language comprised of form and content, ‘equal weight’ 3 between image and text. Our active engagement with this intertwined composition, as well as its active engagement with us, becomes a much more muted, if not lazy, affair in the hands of Penguin’s de-designers. They refuse involvement.
The de-design of the 2008 version brought me back to 1972. The tattered orange spine of my Penguin edition and white spine of ‘a Pelican Original’ were broken once again.
‘To be continued by the reader …’
These are the last words of Ways of Seeing that appear on page 166. This single line of type and its surrounding white space invite our occupation: we are prompted to continue to look beyond these carefully crafted pages and, as the ellipsis marks invite, add to the conversation.
… this page flipper did not want Penguin’s 2008 version to have the last word, better yet, last, or lasting impression of Ways of Seeing as it celebrates its 40th year anniversary in 2012.
To mark this milestone, the journal of visual culture invited contributors to reflect on the BBC television series and accompanying book produced in 1972. Both were collaborative efforts. For instance, although the book carries the name ‘John Berger’ on its front cover, its prelims clearly announce that it has been ‘made’ by the following people: John Berger, Sven Blomberg, Chris Fox, Michael Dibb, and Richard Hollis (this page is pushed to the back of the 2008 edition). In acknowledging this collaborative craft, the journal has opted to adopt Ways of Seeing as the title for its themed issue in order to neither credit the labor to a single author, nor the project/performance to a single medium. To occupy the journal’s pages, I invited a number of scholars to write short reflective essays that consider Ways of Seeing’s place within their own research, teaching, learning, and its continued influence on the study of visual culture. I especially encouraged personal accounts with the book: memoirs of contributors’ first encounter as a student as well as its place within their own pedagogic practices. The responses greatly exceeded this initial request in wonderfully diverse and insightful ways of still seeing Ways of Seeing.
This themed issue, like Ways of Seeing before it, was also ‘made’ by a collaborative effort. The contributing writers who, being generous with their time and intellectual labor, shared their own thoughts, recollections, criticism, and continued interests in the project. And I wish to thank each of them here: Mieke Bal, Geoffrey Batchen, Lisa Cartwright, Jill Casid, Laurie Beth Clark, Clive Dilnot, Jennifer González, Ben Highmore, Martin Jay, Guy Julier, Louis Kaplan, Peter Lunenfeld, Tara McPherson, Tom Overton, Griselda Pollock, Adrian Rifkin, and Marita Sturken. Without their early enthusiasm for the themed issue it would not have developed. journal of visual culture editors, Juliette Kristensen and susan pui san lok, each introduced invaluable contributions to this project. Juliette conducted an interview with Michael Dibb and Richard Hollis. Dibb generously provided access to his personal archive and the objects constitute an ‘Archivery’ arranged by susan. The journal’s regular ‘events section’ is also curated by susan to further the engagement by inviting contributors – Sonia Boyce, Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, Julian Stallabrass, John Timberlake, and Ming Wong – whose commissioned pieces speak directly to, or demonstrate inspiration from, Ways of Seeing. Readers will also find an ‘Events Editorial’ written by susan. The ‘making’ of an issue precedes its content and must acknowledge its hands-on management through the production process. For this, the guest editors are indebted to the journal’s excellent, rock-climbing, editorial assistant, Laine Nooney and to Marquard Smith, editor-in-chief, for immediately supporting this project when I showed up at the 2010 annual journal of visual culture editorial group meeting railing against the de-designed contents of my shopping bag.