The Ongoing Moment

Book excerpt: Great photographs change the way we see the world; The Ongoing Moment changes the way we look at both. Focusing on the ways in which canonical figures like Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Walker Evans, André Kertész, Edward Weston, Dorothea Lange, Diane Arbus, and William Eggleston have photographed the same things—barber shops, benches, hands, roads, signs—award-winning writer Geoff Dyer seeks to identify their signature styles. In doing so, he constructs a narrative in which these photographers—many of whom never met—constantly encounter one another. The result is a kaleidoscopic work of extraordinary originality and insight.