The Ongoing Moment by Geoff Dyer is one of the books on the recommended reading list for this course, so I’d been looking forward to reading it having gained a bit more experience now after completing TAOP. When I first started TAOP, I felt overwhelmed having to read a lot of books which kept rattling off the names of various photographers I’d never heard of. I didn’t know where to start, or even how to research and study.
Having a little more experience now, I’m now able to process and assimilate information easier. The names of the photographers have become much more familiar to me, as have what kind of photographs they mainly shot, and a bit of background research into their lives.
This is one of the books that has helped me gain a far greater understanding of how to read a photograph, and has helped me place images into historical context. Who did the masters of photography learn from? What similarities can be found in different photographers’ styles? It’s helped me to figure out what photography actually is, and consolidated bits and bobs of knowledge and information that I picked up through TAOP.
Dyer’s book brings up images and photographers, and puts it all into context for you. Many times I found myself stopping and picking up my phone or tablet to look further into a particular image or photographer. Naturally this book isn’t alone in doing that, and when you begin to piece all the information you get from the internet, books, magazines etc together, you suddenly start to understand what photography is, and how it has got to where it is today.
The book provides insight into the lives of photographers, and how it influenced their work. You begin to links between the likes of Strand, Stieglitz, Evans and Weston, to name but a few.
Some of the links are a bit of a stretch on occasion, (there is a brief point where Dyer comments on how alike Evans and Weston were, and uses their initials (WE and EW) to corroborate it, but if you can take some of these coincidences with a pinch of salt, this is a fascinating book.
As with all the books I’ve read whilst studying with the OCA, it will have to be read again and again before it sinks in properly, but that will have to wait until I have finished Charlotte Cotton’s The Photograph as Contemporary Art, which I’m now in the process of reading for a second time to try and help build my photographic knowledge.
My People and Place Learning Log 