The Ongoing Moment | Geoff Dyer | superb look at photography

The Ongoing Moment | Geoff Dyer | A glimpse upon the photographic moment

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The Ongoing Moment

	The Ongoing Moment Geoff Dyer Vintage, 2007 - 304 pages average customer review:based on 7 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Great photographs change the way we see the world; The Ongoing Moment changes the way we look at both.

Focusing on the ways in which canonical figures like Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Walker Evans, André Kertész, Edward Weston, Dorothea Lange, Diane Arbus, and William Eggleston have photographed the same things?barber shops, benches, hands, roads, signs?award-winning writer Geoff Dyer seeks to identify their signature styles. In doing so, he constructs a narrative in which these photographers?many of whom never met?constantly encounter one another. The result is a kaleidoscopic work of extraordinary originality and insight.

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superb look at photography

This book is not a history of photography--nor is it meant to be--though it does look at photography over a large span of time and so is by default a history of sorts. But the book is really one writer's meditation on photography. As such, much is left out, but the omissions in no way mar the book; being comprehensive is not the point. One reviewer above calls the book cynical, like cocktail chatter (not sure what the two have in common or how Dyer could in any way be construed as cynical), which seems preposterous. Simply put, Dyer writes as a person fascinated with and under the spell of photography (an approach he took to his book on jazz), and in doing so offers keen insights--the likes of which are not to be found in other books on the subject. His viewpoint as an outsider is actually a benefit. Beautifully written, this book is a classic, something a reader will return to again and again.

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A glimpse upon the photographic moment

This book is admittedly the first and only by Geoff Dyer that I have read but I have a feeling that will change for me. As an interested reader about photography, the book is a wonderful weaving of history and culture in the production of the "representative" photograph.

One need not have a deep knowledge of the history of photography to be amazed at the linkages and connections that Dyer proposes between photographers and their photographic products. Examples are presented in the book to facilitate Dyer's exposure (perhaps fabrication) of a long extended conversation amongst recognized photographers through the subjects they photographed. Whether by fact or fiction or insider knowledge, it turns out not to matter, for the wonderful thing about looking at such photographs is that the content can mean so many different things depending upon the life and experiences of the viewer - true of any art done well.

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The Ongoing Moment

This book may be more meaningful for the reader with some knowlege in the field. It's coversational tone and references to photographers
and their works already familiar to the reader promotes a feeling of intimacy.
I found the author's views on photography interesting. His views on the
works of well-known photographers,their similar subjects and their personal approaches to these like subjects proved illuminating as well.

Could be a textbook for introductory creative photography

Dyer, a non-photographer has taken on the task of trying to catalog trends in photography. Its weaknesses are that it is limited as the author writes (he did have to get permission to use images) and is mainly American men and twentieth century. While it includes Diane Arbus, Dorothea Lange and Nan Goldin extensively and two brief mentions of Imogen Cunningham. The absence of Margaret Bourke-White, Lisette Model, Sally Mann, Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson, Carrie Mae Weems, and Tina Barney when they would have fit into what was studied created the typical boys club attitude.

That being said it is still a good introductory to thinking about what is going in your photographs. Without taking a photograph he illuminates the subject of subject matter.

By having no chapters but rather by slipping in and out of subject matter he does a very good job of introducing photographic history and theory to the beginner. He allows people to think about how they have been influenced by the images and social meanings of subject matter that goes into a photographer's decision to trip the shutter.

One of the greatest lessons for a photographer to learn is that you are not photographing a completely new idea. You as a photographer have been influenced by the society that you have grown up in and while you may not consciously recognize that an image is familiar to you that image has been seen before. Dyer indicates that quotation can sometimes create better images by the quoter than the quoted and allows the photographer to make a statement about the quoted.

Dyer as an Englishman can take an outsider's view of American photography and recognize cultural differences and preferences that an American inherently overlooks as natural. I think that this helps him understand Robert Frank even more than Americans think they do, however it also ignored William Klein's work that was always overshadowed by Frank's coming out a year or two later and grabbing the attention.

Overall he did a thorough examination within the limitations of the length of the book and images to use (images should be larger) and tied it altogether by the end. It is hard to write a cohesive book on such a wide subject so the author who hopes that his book can be read non-linearally did an excellent job of weaving an image into his tapestry.

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reviews: page 1, 2

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