When John Berger explained perspective, he went on to note that the photograph destroyed all assumptions about perspective. The single eye was no longer the “center of the world” and it became obvious that moments in time could be seen from many different angles by many different people. An artistic representation of this concept is cubism, a movement that took place shortly after photographs dominated the painted scene. Cubist paintings like the one above strive to show multiple perspectives as if multiple viewers are regarding the subject of this painting (in this case, a woman playing a mandolin).
As for Katie Paterson’s Vatnajokul, I do think that her implementation of multimedia added perspective. Berger mentioned in the first chapter that people are jaded by images, and I agree. The pictures of the glacier alone did little for me, but the addition of the sounds (an eerie, melting, trickling set of sounds) earned my full attention. Just as painting styles took a turn once the photograph became mainstream, so must our current methods of capturing history. In this day and age, photographs (however stunning) are not enough.
