John Berger and Susan Sontag Meet for the First Time at 1974 Aspen Design Conference

In June 1974, the 24th International Design Conference in Aspen, Colorado, brought together artists and intellectuals from around the world under the theme Between Self & System, a title emphasizing the relationship between individual experience and organized forms of society. Among the participants were Bobby Seale, co-founder of the Black Panthers; Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka; architect Giancarlo De Carlo; designer Milton Glaser; and photographer Cornell Capa. John Berger and Susan Sontag were also present, and the two had never met before. Berger was scheduled to present two excerpts from Ways of Seeing, the BBC series he made two years earlier that was later turned into a book, offering a critique of seeing as a non-innocent act shaped by history, power, and the circulation of images. Sontag was expected the following day with her talk on Promised. The account is by Chiara Lagani and Anita Romanello.