3/15

I just finished reading Geoff Dyer's 'The Ongoing Moment' and I will say it was a treat; especially after 'On Photography' and 'About Looking'. What was most refreshing about it was that Dyer wasn't proclaiming to be an expert on photography and it wasn't filled with sweeping generalizations like some other works. He's just a guy writing about photos he's looked at and how there are different themes running through the work of some of photography's most important artists. How they often photograph the same motifs (road signs, hats, barber shops, empty rooms, doors, etc) and then somehow connecting them as if they had met (some had, but most of them never crossed paths). He does a wonderful job of breaking down and examining the work of Walker Evans, Andre Kertesz, Dorothea Lange, Paul Strand, Robert Frank and William Eggleston in a way that is fresh and provocative. He just tells you what he thinks, not some manifesto about what photography is or should be. Even though he admits to not owning a camera, he actually seems to LIKE photography.

He also writes a hilarious description of Eggleston's work, 'Eggleston's photographs look like the were taken by a Martian who lost the ticket for his flight home and ended up working at a gun shop in a small town near Memphis'. That alone is reason to read this book. He's also written one of the best fictional works about jazz called 'But Beautiful'.