BOOKS I'M CURRENTLY READING: The Ongoing Moment by Geoff Dyer, The Designer's Packaging Bible by Luke Herriott
I just came across The Ongoing Moment by Geoff Dyer, yesterday. And already it's got me hooked. From Publishers Weekly:
Having already tackled jazz (But Beautiful) and D.H. Lawrence (Out of Sheer Rage), cultural critic Dyer now turns his intelligent and discriminating eye to photography. Essentially a fast-moving series of highly focused "close readings," his volume zeros in on the way "certain photographs serve as nodes, places where subjects initially considered distinct converge and merge." Thus Paul Strand's "Blind Woman, New York, 1916" leads Dyer not only to other photographs of the blind by Lewis Hine and Gary Winogrand, but also to a survey of different portraits of blind author Jorge Luis Borges and to a consideration of Walker Evans's SX-70 photographs. Like the great English critic John Berger (Ways of Seeing), whom Dyer wrote about in Ways of Telling, the author has a lively and dramatic sense of provocation. He declares, for instance, that William Eggleston's photographs look "like they 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." He also has a loose-limbed—and mostly surefooted—ability to balance a number of elements into a functioning whole. In an overcrowded field, Dyer's book is distinguished by an idiosyncratic and infectious enthusiasm. 8 pages color illus. not seen by PW. (Oct. 4) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
And The Designer's Packaging Bible? Well, Darby lent that to me months before he left for Carbondale. At the time, I was mildly interested because I wasn't really designing any packaging. It's not something I really do that often. But now that Darby's gone, I figure I'd take a fresh look at the new permanent addition to my library. Yes, just kidding, Darby... ;)
