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A review by jimmylorunning
The Ongoing Moment by Geoff Dyer
4.0
A poetic meditation on photography that serves also as a history of photographic themes and concerns as well as of America itself (the depression, modernization, transportation etc). My feeling is that if you are a really serious photographer, with your mind already made up about the medium, then you will not like this book, as it doesn't approach photography from either the viewpoint of the academic nor of the practitioner (Dyer doesn't even own a camera). He approaches it as a writer, pure and simple, and what he writes about is as much about himself as it is about photography. Which is exactly his point about photographers: they often approach the same subject (hats, barber shops, backs, benches) but the photos are often more about the photographer who took them than the actual subject matter at hand.
In this way, Geoff Dyer's meditation is personal, quirky; he is attracted to those things that catches his eye on a whim, makes him want to write more about. One of the things that catches his eye are photos taken by one photographer that resemble the work of another. This gets at the heart of the identity of the artist versus his subject matter as well as the ongoing tradition that is built up between generations. Much like in writing, in photography there are also allusions, references, what-have-you, so that a photo can transcend its immediate subject by embracing, commenting on, or rejecting previous photographs on the subject, establishing a conversation across time/moments.
Surely Dyer is aware of these same concerns in his own medium (writing); the book is peppered with quotes and references to writers before him, be they directly related to the subject of photography (Sontag, Barthes, Berger, Benjamin) or not: people he cannot not allude to because they are in the very DNA of his writing (DH Lawrence, Rilke, Whitman, Didion, Borges). This melding of influences creates a very personal style that is the antithesis of academic writing. Oddly enough it reminds me not of a specific writer-ly tradition (though a case can be made) but more of a direct lineage of those great personal documentary films by Agnes Vardas, or of Chris Marker's Sans Soleil, with a dash of Herzog thrown in as well. Perhaps this feeling is only enhanced by the fact that this is such a visual book, you must follow his arguments by examining the photos as well as the words.
As a non-photographer... and even as someone who wasn't that interested in photography, this book really drew me in. I delighted to see them through Dyer's eyes. The background information about each photographer, the drama too, and the fact that we get to follow them through different thematic threads, deepens the appreciation of any one photo beyond its frame, so that I began to see each one as a piece of a continuous web, a meeting place between disparate views.
But I didn't always see eye to eye with him; there were some points he made that I didn't see at all, though we were looking at the same thing. His argument (and Winogrand's argument) that Robert Frank's photo of the SAVE GAS photo was one that baffled me:
Here I see so much going on. The gas pumps look otherworldly, like aliens that have landed on a barren landscape, looking for earth's leader. It's fascinating. What's more, the SAVE GAS sign looks like the ribbon stretched across the finish line in a race, as if these pumps were jockeying for position to cross the line. What's not fascinating about it? What I wanted was an explanation for why Winogrand didn't see the potential in this as a photograph.
Oddly enough, I thought some of the other photos discussed to have much less potential, photos of the open road, for example, stretching into the distance.
In other places, Dyer tries to make so many connections, tries to draw everything together into one interconnected photograph that I felt like he was stretching it a bit. He takes too big of leaps in some ways, but in other ways he succeeds. And always he writes beautifully, alternating between fact driven biography, poetic prose, down and dirty analysis, and playful turn-of-phrase humor.
One complaint: many of the photos discussed were not included (like the Frank photo above) or were reproduced so tiny that I could barely make out the details. Needless to say, the internet was an important resource
In this way, Geoff Dyer's meditation is personal, quirky; he is attracted to those things that catches his eye on a whim, makes him want to write more about. One of the things that catches his eye are photos taken by one photographer that resemble the work of another. This gets at the heart of the identity of the artist versus his subject matter as well as the ongoing tradition that is built up between generations. Much like in writing, in photography there are also allusions, references, what-have-you, so that a photo can transcend its immediate subject by embracing, commenting on, or rejecting previous photographs on the subject, establishing a conversation across time/moments.
Surely Dyer is aware of these same concerns in his own medium (writing); the book is peppered with quotes and references to writers before him, be they directly related to the subject of photography (Sontag, Barthes, Berger, Benjamin) or not: people he cannot not allude to because they are in the very DNA of his writing (DH Lawrence, Rilke, Whitman, Didion, Borges). This melding of influences creates a very personal style that is the antithesis of academic writing. Oddly enough it reminds me not of a specific writer-ly tradition (though a case can be made) but more of a direct lineage of those great personal documentary films by Agnes Vardas, or of Chris Marker's Sans Soleil, with a dash of Herzog thrown in as well. Perhaps this feeling is only enhanced by the fact that this is such a visual book, you must follow his arguments by examining the photos as well as the words.
As a non-photographer... and even as someone who wasn't that interested in photography, this book really drew me in. I delighted to see them through Dyer's eyes. The background information about each photographer, the drama too, and the fact that we get to follow them through different thematic threads, deepens the appreciation of any one photo beyond its frame, so that I began to see each one as a piece of a continuous web, a meeting place between disparate views.
But I didn't always see eye to eye with him; there were some points he made that I didn't see at all, though we were looking at the same thing. His argument (and Winogrand's argument) that Robert Frank's photo of the SAVE GAS photo was one that baffled me:
Looming over the pumps is a sign with the letters S A V E illuminated and the intervening ones--G A S--barely visible. That's all there is, but, for Winogrand, the fact that it's 'a photograph of nothing', that 'the subject has no dramatic ability of its own whatsoever', makes it 'one of the most important pictures in the book'. What amazed Winogrand was that Frank could even conceive of that being a photograph in the first place'. [...] The important thing is "the photographer's understanding of possibilities ... When he took that photograph, he couldn't possibly know -- he just could not know that it would work, that it would be a photograph. He knew he probably had a chance. In other words, he cannot know what that's going to look like as a photograph. I mean, understanding fully that he's going to render what he sees, he still does not know what it's going to look like as a photograph. Something, the fact of photographing something changes..." Winogrand lost his way again but then came back with an irrefutable declaration of intent: "I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed."The conclusion he arrived at was very poetic, I'll admit. But looking at the actual Robert Frank photo (which wasn't included by the way), I just couldn't see the "nothing" that he was talking about:
Here I see so much going on. The gas pumps look otherworldly, like aliens that have landed on a barren landscape, looking for earth's leader. It's fascinating. What's more, the SAVE GAS sign looks like the ribbon stretched across the finish line in a race, as if these pumps were jockeying for position to cross the line. What's not fascinating about it? What I wanted was an explanation for why Winogrand didn't see the potential in this as a photograph.
Oddly enough, I thought some of the other photos discussed to have much less potential, photos of the open road, for example, stretching into the distance.
In other places, Dyer tries to make so many connections, tries to draw everything together into one interconnected photograph that I felt like he was stretching it a bit. He takes too big of leaps in some ways, but in other ways he succeeds. And always he writes beautifully, alternating between fact driven biography, poetic prose, down and dirty analysis, and playful turn-of-phrase humor.
One complaint: many of the photos discussed were not included (like the Frank photo above) or were reproduced so tiny that I could barely make out the details. Needless to say, the internet was an important resource