"Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.""But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but word can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled."John Berger's "Ways of Seeing" is one of the most stimulating and the most influential books on art in any language. First published in 1972, it was based on the BBC television series about which the "London Sunday Times" critic commented: "This is an eye-opener in more ways than one: by concentrating on how we look at paintings ...he will almost certainly change the way you look at pictures." By now he has.

约翰·伯格（John Berger），英国艺术史家，小说家，画家。1926年出生于伦敦。1946年从军队退径后进入Central School of Art Chelsea School of Art学习。1948年至1955年以教授绘画为业，曾举办个人画展1952年，他开始为伦敦New Statesman杂志撰稿，并迅速成为英国当代最有影响力的艺术批评家。此后他更有多部艺术专著问世，如《观看之道》、《看》、《另一种讲述的方式》等，他亦写小说，名篇G.（1972）获英国布克奖及詹姆斯·泰特·布莱克纪念奖。

最近20年间，伯格一直生活在阿尔插斯山脚下的一个法国小村庄中，濒临消亡的传统山区生活方式令他着迷，并反映在他的作品中。