Geoff Dyer - The ongoing moment
It was recommended to me by my tutor after an assignment and it’s a breath of fresh air. I’ve struggled with the contemporary side of photography but after you’ve got past the initial chapter of Dyers book and got used to his style, I found it informative and and really interesting. It’s one of those books you keep reading and find you’ve lost all sense of time.
Dyer concentrates on themes and subjects that photographers seem compelled to return to such as blind beggars, accordion players, benches, fences, hats and poverty. In doing so he shows the influences of photographers and artists on other photographers, concentrating mostly on Stieglitz, Strand, Weston and Evans but also linking in other photographers such as Atget, Kertesz, Ormeral, Wilson and Winogrand. There’s a detail to the background of the photographers lives, how they linked and influenced each other or were influenced.
The way that Dyer explains the connections and influences of the images, with examples has actually made real sense to me now. Instead of looking at images in isolation and not really understanding their significance, this book really helps explain where I’d previously not understood why some images were perceived to be exemplary. In concentrating on single types of images, you can see the influences over a centenary of photography and photographers. There is a comment in the book where Dyer himself says that there a strange rule in photography where we never see the last of anyone or anything. The images disappear then year later reappear.
My main criticism of the book is the limited images, many as small black and white images difficult to distinguish but there are colour pages in the center of the book. It's worth reading and referencing the images on the internet.
