Recorded in October 2002.
John Berger is a storyteller, essayist, novelist, screenwriter, dramatist and critic, whose body of work embodies his concern for, in Geoff Dyer’s words, “the enduring mystery of great art and the lived experience of the oppressed.”
He is one of the most internationally influential writers of the last fifty years, who has explored the relationships between the individual and society, culture and politics and experience and expression in a series of novels, book works, essays, plays, films, photographic collaborations and performances, unmatched in their diversity, ambition and reach. His television series and book Ways of Seeing revolutionized the way that Fine Art is read and understood, while his engagement with European peasantry and migration in the fiction trilogy Into Their Labours and A Seventh Man stand as models of empathy and insight.
John Berger in conversation with Michael Govan at Berger’s home, a working farm, in Quincy, Mieussy, France, October 2002. Govan was at that time the Director of the Dia Foundation and is now Director of the Los Angeles County Museum.
I have loved these conversations with John berger I only wish them to be longer and more of them. I love what he says about the endurance of the artist and how the artist needs this strong endurance to carry on their creative work
Wonderful! I can’t tell you how pleased I am to have found these readings. I could listen to John Berger for ever.
Lannan Foundation, thank you so much for John Berger and for all the other work you guys do. I wish you have more on John. I heard he is working on a book, can´t wait to see that. Please can you document more of his work?