This is probably as academic as it gets! If you want to learn the basics about photography like exposure, composition, etc, then this book is not for you at all! The title is to be taken very literally.
It is an interesting read. You really understand how much goes into interpreting a photograph. Maybe not your ordinary picture of your pet or your new car, but a picture used to document the death of Che Guevara, or the first day in the camp for the Rwandan Tutsi and Hutu refugees.
The chapters do not make up a nice red thread. Instead, it seems like a collection of articles that take their own angle irrespective of the other chapters. Analysis of an an image. Tribute to a photographer. Meet and dialogue with a photographer. Sometimes it is an analysis of a specific picture, other times a photographers work.
It is not an easy read. It is super academic. I will not claim that I understood all that John Berger writes, nor that I read it all. It is simply too demanding for little me. Consider yourself warned.
Related reading
Photo work: Forty photographers on process and practice, edited by Sasha Wolf
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