The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied … but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which as beggar is a reminder of nothing.
John Berger
“The Soul and the Operator” in Landscapes: John Berger on Art
In memory of John Berger, a British art critic who challenged traditional ways of thinking about art through his books and television series; he died yesterday in Paris.
