[4] His grandfather was from Trieste, now Italy,[5] and his father, Stanley, raised as a non-religious Jew who adopted Catholicism,[6] had been an infantry officer on the Western Front during the First World War and was awarded the Military Cross[3][7] and an OBE.

[2][12] His Marxist literary criticism and strongly stated opinions on modern art combined to make him a controversial figure early in his career.

The first episode functions as an introduction to the study of images; it was derived in part from Walter Benjamin's essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction".

[19] The subsequent episodes concern the image of woman as a sexualized object in Western culture, expressions of property ownership and wealth in European oil painting, and modern advertising.

[20] The series, the first of several close collaborations with director Mike Dibb, has had a lasting influence, and in particular introduced the concept of the male gaze, as part of his analysis of the treatment of the nude in European painting.

It soon became popular among feminists, including the British film critic Laura Mulvey, who used it to critique traditional media representations of the female character in cinema.

[26][27] Their subsequent book, Another Way of Telling, discusses and illustrates their documentary technique and treats the theory of photography through Berger's essays and Mohr's photographs.

[2] In the 1970s, Berger collaborated on three films with the Swiss director Alain Tanner:[1][10] He wrote or co-wrote La Salamandre (1971), The Middle of the World (1974), and Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000 (1976).

[29] His major fictional work of the 1980s, the trilogy Into Their Labours (consisting of the novels Pig Earth, Once in Europa, and Lilac and Flag),[4][30] treats the European peasant experience from its farming roots to contemporary economic and political displacement and urban poverty.

[1][38] In Bento's Sketchbook (2011) Berger combines extracts from Baruch Spinoza, sketches, memoir, and observations in a book that contemplates the relationship of materialism to spirituality.

[39] The book has been described as "a characteristically sui generis work combining an engagement with the thought of the 17th-century lens grinder, draughtsman, and philosopher Baruch Spinoza, with a study of drawing and a series of semi-autobiographical sketches".

[7][40] In 1999, Berger voiced both twin brother characters Archie and Albert Crisp in the video game Grand Theft Auto: London 1969.