PHOTOGRAPHY THEORY #5: Geoff Dyer

From a beginner's guide to photography by The Telegraph 

The Ongoing Moment by Geoff Dyer (2005), digested by Rachel Segal Hamilton 

This is not a history book. True, it covers the work and lives of some of the biggest figures (mainly American) in photography – including Alfred Steiglitz, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Diane Arbus, William Eggleston and Nan Goldin. But instead of progressing chronologically as one might expect, the structure is playful, grouping together pictures shot by different photographers of the same subjects: blind people, subways, signs, hands, backs, hats, stairs, fences, snow, windows, roads, cinemas, clouds, petrol stations, barber shops, doors.
Mixed in with the close readings of photographs are musings on life, quotes from writers – such as Wordsworth, Italo Calvino, Jean Rhys – as well as photographers, and colourful biographical anecdotes. We learn about the resentment felt by André Kertész at having to take photographs for money while his personal work went unappreciated, about the time Richard Avedon photographed Jorge Luis Borges and about the intricacies of relationships between Alfred Steiglitz and Georgia O'Keefe.
From the outset Dyer positions himself as a non-expert – he doesn't even own a camera, apparently – and rather than making big theoretical claims about photography as a medium, he writes about how specific photographs have affected him emotionally. Skipping backwards and forwards through time, making connections between photographers and writers, images and ideas, The Ongoing Moment celebrates a personal approach to looking at photographs that reflects the hotchpotch way we understand the world. 

In his own words: 

“Photographers sometimes take pictures of each other; occasionally they take photographs – or versions – of each other's work. Consciously or not they are constantly in dialogue with their contemporaries and predecessors.”
“...there is, I am beginning to suspect, a strange rule in photography, namely that we never see the last of anyone or anything. They disappear or die and then, years later, they reappear, are reincarnated, in another lens.”
“My favourite photographs by Brassai are the ones done in daylight, especially the ones that look like they were done by Lartigue. It's quite possible that some of my favourite Shores were taken by Eggleston, and vice versa. Perhaps it's not such a surprise, then, that my favourite Walker Evans (WE) photograph was taken by Edward Weston (EW).” 

How to sound as if you've read it: 

You know, the development of photography has been much more like a conversation than a story.