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A review by unfoldingdrama
The Ongoing Moment by Geoff Dyer
4.0
This is a narrative of the history of photography, but told through associations that Dyer sees in images created by its more famous practitioners. Really it is an argument for the intertextuality of images told through the ways that photographers cite and communicate with each other through their work, perhaps indeliberately at times, through recurring motifs.
The text itself is really a single long, roughly chronological essay, punctuated with images, yet it is also more than that as is at time conversational, philosophical and biographical. Throughout, Dyer does his own intertextual work drawing on a range of poets, authors and artists to illustrate his arguments, including Whitman, Borges, Barthes, Didion, DeLillo, Calvino, Hopper, Pessoa, Larkin, Baudrillard and Sontag.
I found its intelligence and humour utterly compelling, which was a surprise as I initially intended to read it in small bursts expecting it to be dryer and more methodical. My only complaint is that it is pretty American-centric it its photographic focus and reading it you would think the only non-Americans to make major developmental contributions to photography were the French trio of Cartier-Bresson, Atget and Brassaï. Otherwise excellent.
The text itself is really a single long, roughly chronological essay, punctuated with images, yet it is also more than that as is at time conversational, philosophical and biographical. Throughout, Dyer does his own intertextual work drawing on a range of poets, authors and artists to illustrate his arguments, including Whitman, Borges, Barthes, Didion, DeLillo, Calvino, Hopper, Pessoa, Larkin, Baudrillard and Sontag.
I found its intelligence and humour utterly compelling, which was a surprise as I initially intended to read it in small bursts expecting it to be dryer and more methodical. My only complaint is that it is pretty American-centric it its photographic focus and reading it you would think the only non-Americans to make major developmental contributions to photography were the French trio of Cartier-Bresson, Atget and Brassaï. Otherwise excellent.