Between the Eyes

John Berger, geb. 1926 in London, gest. am 2. Januar 2017.Er absolvierte ein Kunststudium und war dann Zeichenlehrer und Maler mit mehreren erfolgreichen Ausstellungen. In den fünfziger Jahren beteiligte er sich an der internationalen Kampagne "Artists for Peace". Seine Kunstkritiken erschienen in zahlreichen Zeitschriften. Außerdem arbeitete er für das Fernsehen und schrieb Drehbücher. 1989 erhielt Berger den Österreichischen Staatspreis für Publizistik. Für sein Werk erhielt John Berger 1991 den Petrarca-Preis.

David Levi Strauss is a writer whose visual and intellectual sensibilities are both acute and expansive. His trenchant writings on photography and photographers have been collected for this volume from a broad range of magazines, including Aperture, Artforum and The Nation. In Between the Eyes: Essays on Photography and Politics, Strauss tackles subjects as diverse as "Photography and Propaganda," the imagery of dreams, Sebastiao Salgado's epic social documents and the deeply personal photographic revelations of Francesca Woodman. The timely issue of photographic legitimacy is addressed in the essay "Photography and Belief," and in "The Highest Degree of Illusion," Strauss discusses the media frenzy surrounding the events of September 11. As our world is shaped more and more by images and their slipperiness, what he calls a media "pandemonium" in its root meaning of "the place of all howling demons," we need a mind and voice like Levi Strauss' to bring clarity to our vision.