The Ongoing Moment: A Book About Photographs
The Ongoing Moment
by Geoff Dyer
Back
[3Dec18] This one is on the back-burner for now.
As I start this writeup, I'm on page 149 of the book and I'm due at an RPS bookclub on Wednesday (17Oct18) to discuss pages 85-186.
Google's original home page, 1998
Wikipedia
At around page 100, I made a note that the book is a series of annotated lists: it as though the author Googles a noun, clicks the images option and looks for photographs by well-known practitioners to opinionate about for a few pages before rolling the dice on another noun. (The book was published in 2005, a year after Google's IPO and I cannot remember what internet searches were like back then.)
There's nothing wrong with that of course: if you have a bright imagination and a keen turn of phrase then it ould be a fine way to construct a book. And it's not as if Dyer was not totally upfront about this: he opens the book with a glorious list from Borges in his 1942 essay, The Analytical Language of John Wilkins (Wikipedia)
According to this arcane work 'animals are divided into: (a) those that belong to the Emperor; (b) embalmed ones; (c) those that are trained; (d) suckling pigs; (e) mermaids, (f) fabulous ones; (g) stray dogs (h) those included in the present classification; (i) those that tremble as if they were mad; (j) innumerable ones; (k) those drawn with a very fine camel's-hair brush; (l) et cetera; (m) those that have just broken the flower vase; (n) those that at distance look like flies.' Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge
[This reminds me of a piece by Eddie Izzard which I have documented somewhere and will add when I find it. But I digress.]
At page 134, the book suddenly takes flight when he introduces the word SYNECDOCHE. It was a new one on me and I'm still not sure how to pronounce it: wiktionary suggests si-NECK-dock-ee. It means, delightfully,
- where a part signifies the whole, e.g. "look at my new wheels" means "look at my new car"
- or where the whole represents a part, e.g. "England won by six wickets" really means "the England cricket team … "
These are immensely useful notions for discussing photography, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's get to back to the first 100 pages of lists.
text
Logo v.2
quote citation
text