The Interminable Moment of Photographs by Geoff Dyer

Convinced that the differences between an amateur are obvious when one compares works dealing with similar issues, Geoff Dyer invites us to classify the subjects photography has developed throughout its history.

Since there are issues and even important figures who, glimpsed in a mid-19th century photograph, often appear to be re-incarnated, one of today's most brilliant English writers examines the secret life of hats and blind men. He explores their invitation to reflect on the sense of sight and the impulse that leads us to photograph nudes, unmade beds and take photos from a moving vehicle. He examines solitary gas stations and the thresholds to another reality, be they stairs, doors, war photos or disturbing photos of empty cinemas.

From Eugène Atget to Nan Goldin (and including Atget and Talbot, Stieglitz and Strand, Evans and Frank, Arbus and Sugimoto, Eggleston and Shore) Dyer analyzes the elements that have interested generations of photographers, as well as the tributes, dialogues and challenges that have arisen between artists who do not hesitate to capture subjects that seemed to be the exclusive province of their rivals or masters.

In this classification of the photographic tradition that is as profound as it is entertaining, Dyer’s gaze helps us discover how certain things look when they have been portrayed and suggests that there is no idle time for photography but rather a single, intense, interminable moment, created by its devoted practitioners.

Regarded as one of the most original and talented European writers of his generation, Geoff Dyer is the author of 11 novels and books of essays, including Love in Venice and Death in Benares (Mondadori), winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, and the Somerset Maugham Prize for But Beautiful in 1992. A contributor to The Guardian, The Independent and The New York Times, he also edited the Selected essays and John Berger and was coeditor, with Margaret Sartor, of What was true: the photographs and notebooks of William Gedney. In this book, Dyer places his intelligence and literary sensitivity at the service of photography.