Owen Hatherley in Sidecar:
John Berger had one of the longest and richest lives among British writers, but he never quite made it to 100. In his absence, the centenary of his birth this year sees a flurry of publications and republications. Verso have put out a, so far, thirteen-volume series of reprints and new editions; Tom Overton’s long-awaited biography is due in the autumn; and a series of illustrated books have been published or republished by Objectif, run by the filmmaker, artist and Berger collaborator John Christie. Among these is a new book that is perhaps the strangest of the anniversary publications: Four Horizons, an account of Berger and Christie’s journey to Le Corbusier’s Chapelle Notre-Dame du Haut in Ronchamp, in the company of two Benedictine nuns from Connecticut. One quality of Berger’s later works – off-putting to some – was a certain folksy soulfulness, and this account of an actual pilgrimage brings out especially sharply what is both significant and frustrating in the writer’s voluminous late works.
Berger’s reputation is assured and immovable on the basis of a series of books, documentaries and films, largely of the 1970s: above all, two unimpeachable works, the audacious popularization of Walter Benjamin’s aesthetics and feminist theory Ways of Seeing (1972), and the account, with the Swiss photographer Jean Mohr, of immigrant lives in Europe, A Seventh Man (1975). The new Verso editions reveal just how consistent Berger’s preoccupations were, even when writing about subjects to which he would seem ill-suited.
More here.
Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.