And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos

'Those who read or listen to our stories see everything as though through a lens. This lens is the secret of narration, and it is ground anew in every story, ground between the temporal and the timeless ...In our brief mortal lives, we are grinders of these lenses'. When John Berger wrote this apparently unclassifiable book, it was to become a sensation, translated into nine languages and indelible from the minds of those who read it. This stunning work is a shoebox filled with delicate love letters containing poetry and thoughts on mortality, art, love and absence, capturing moments in time that hover above Berger's surprising landscapes. From his lyrical description of the works of Caravaggio and profound explorations of death and immigration to the sight of some lilac at dusk in the mountains, this is a beautiful and most intimate response to the world around us.

'Those who read or listen to our stories see everything as though through a lens. This lens is the secret of narration, and it is ground anew in every story, ground between the temporal and the timeless ...In our brief mortal lives, we are grinders of these lenses'. When John Berger wrote this apparently unclassifiable book, it was to become a sensation, translated into nine languages and indelible from the minds of those who read it. This stunning work is a shoebox filled with delicate love letters containing poetry and thoughts on mortality, art, love and absence, capturing moments in time that hover above Berger's surprising landscapes. From his lyrical description of the works of Caravaggio and profound explorations of death and immigration to the sight of some lilac at dusk in the mountains, this is a beautiful and most intimate response to the world around us.

A stunning, unclassifiable work by one of the twentieth century's greatest thinkers and writers, this book is an inspiring amalgam of letters, poetry, and profound musings on everything from Caravaggio to the nature of time itself. And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos may be the most original of John Berger's books; certainly, it is among the most moving. A meditation on first and last things, it is divided into two parts, one reflecting on humanity's relation to time, the other on our place in space. "Once," the first part is called, and like fairy tales, the sections that follow, encompassing essays, stories, and passages of plainspoken poetry, echo that initial once, as Berger contemplates the ways in which death and love and sex and life revolve around each other in human existence and find expression in art and work and the observances of daily life. Part two, called "Here," investigates the idea of home in a world where capitalism has rendered everyone homeless, not only the countless people who, over the last two centuries and ever more now, have been driven by need to leave their native ground for strange cities and suburbs and slums, but also the well-to-do and the rich, content to exchange the reality of home for the fungibility of property. Against such backgrounds, Berger considers the role of storytelling and the power of poetry and painting, and above all--because a letter addressed to the absent beloved resonates throughout the pages of this book--is the renewing and unsettling persistence of love and desire.

A stunning, unclassifiable work by one of the twentieth century's greatest thinkers and writers, this book is an inspiring amalgam of letters, poetry, and profound musings on everything from Caravaggio to the nature of time itself. And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos may be the most original of John Berger's books; certainly, it is among the most moving. A meditation on first and last things, it is divided into two parts, one reflecting on humanity's relation to time, the other on our place in space. "Once," the first part is called, and like fairy tales, the sections that follow, encompassing essays, stories, and passages of plainspoken poetry, echo that initial once, as Berger contemplates the ways in which death and love and sex and life revolve around each other in human existence and find expression in art and work and the observances of daily life. Part two, called "Here," investigates the idea of home in a world where capitalism has rendered everyone homeless, not only the countless people who, over the last two centuries and ever more now, have been driven by need to leave their native ground for strange cities and suburbs and slums, but also the well-to-do and the rich, content to exchange the reality of home for the fungibility of property. Against such backgrounds, Berger considers the role of storytelling and the power of poetry and painting, and above all--because a letter addressed to the absent beloved resonates throughout the pages of this book--is the renewing and unsettling persistence of love and desire.