"Another Narrative":Research On John Berg's Visual Narrative Theory

The 20th-century British art historian and painter John Berg attracted the attention of the literary world and readers with his non-academic writing style.His works were full of sensibility and poetry,which was quite different from academic discourse.The “publicity” contained in his works brought him more readers than academic scholars.As an active art critic,painter and novelist,Berg was also an important thinker in the field of visual culture.Berg's visual narrative theory began with his long-term focus on the theme of meaning and ambiguity in vision or viewing itself.Berg experimented with a new way of telling when writing,using photography to tell a story.The phrase "another kind of narrative" is to illustrate that visual narratives with photography as the main research object are different from traditional text narratives or traditional photographic narratives with textual descriptions.It emphasizes the nature of photography and the typical meaning of the image after it leaves the text.Berg said photography is "another way of telling".Summarizing the development process of visual culture and combing Berg's theoretical framework have guiding significance for us to explore and study Berg's visual narrative theory.Berg's visual narrative theory was greatly influenced by Benjamin's "Aura of Light" and Heidegger's Phenomenology,and eventually developed and transcended in his own thinking.Seeing is the first channel through which people receive information.It is an important way for the viewer to understand and transform the world.It presents the process of the viewer's experience in dealing with the outside world through his own knowledge,cognition and belief.The photographic seeing is bilateral.It changing the way people perceive from the perspective of viewing standards and changing the way people view visual art.The instantaneous advantage of photo recording challenges the traditional concepts of art,making art no longer the only way to record.Image is the basic unit of visual culture research,and the performance of visual image exists because of the seeing of visual subjects.Through visual metaphor,the problem of“existence” turns into a “visible” problem and develops more connotations.As the expression paradigm of Berg's visual narrative theory,photography not only has a narrative structure,but also a narrative form.The instantaneous memories of photo recording also record long-term events.All images are the products of the past time,presenting a logical narrative effect.Photography emphasizes the spatial characteristics of narrative and reflects the superior characteristics of photographic narrative ability.The visual narrative uses the synchronic picture to reproduce the diachronic process,and the interaction between the text narrative and the image narrative appears as a single image narrative and multiple continuous pictures.A single image can be independently formed into a chapter,or it can be connected in groups to create a visual narrative chain of words like multiple images.Photography has its own languageexpression,that is,photos cite phenomena,and phenomena are semi-language of photography.Visual imitation and various phenomena are interrelated because of the existence of the common laws of the structure and growth of visual affinity.The coherence of phenomena means unity,and phenomena are semi-language of photography.The phenomenon stimulates the viewer's experience and understanding in the special coherence of a given moment,and forms an idea.The concept tells the lens directly.Photographic images are an expression of visual narrative.At the same time,photographic images are ambiguous,authentic and historic.The ambiguity of the image comes from the its discontinuity,and all the photos are full of ambiguity.The image directly copies the reality,so photography does not lie and all images are authentic.The image records history and is recorded by history,and everything in the image is historical.Berg believed that photography not only has ideological connotations,but also is the way individuals resist history.Private images are more important than public photographs,and private images express individual resistance to the group.Berg deeply analyzed the individual relationship and the social and historical background behind the individual,emphasizing the expression of individual experience,and the individual consciousness is constantly awakened.Visual narrative theory is a creation of John Berg's art criticism and practice.His visual theory is based on the viewer's point of view,and the analysis of photography based on visual viewing.Although Berg presented some limitations in the process of critical practice,his theory had a tremendous impact on the studies of visual culture theory in the 20 th century.