See/Saw: Looking at Photographs
A lavishly illustrated history of photography in essays by the author of Otherwise Known as the Human Condition


See/Saw shows how photographs frame and change our perspective on the world. Taking in photographers from early in the last century to the present day—including artists such as Eugène Atget, Vivian Maier, Roy DeCarava, and Alex Webb—the celebrated writer Geoff Dyer offers a series of moving, witty, prescient, surprising, and intimate encounters with images.


Dyer has been writing about photography for thirty years, and this tour de force of visual scrutiny and stylistic flair gathers his lively, engaged criticism over the course of a decade. A rich addition to Dyer’s The Ongoing Moment, and heir to Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida, Susan Sontag’s On Photography, and John Berger’s Understanding a Photograph, See/Saw shows how a photograph can simultaneously record and invent the world, revealing a brilliant seer at work. It is a paean to art and art writing by one of the liveliest critics of our day.

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See/Saw: Looking at Photographs
A lavishly illustrated history of photography in essays by the author of Otherwise Known as the Human Condition


See/Saw shows how photographs frame and change our perspective on the world. Taking in photographers from early in the last century to the present day—including artists such as Eugène Atget, Vivian Maier, Roy DeCarava, and Alex Webb—the celebrated writer Geoff Dyer offers a series of moving, witty, prescient, surprising, and intimate encounters with images.


Dyer has been writing about photography for thirty years, and this tour de force of visual scrutiny and stylistic flair gathers his lively, engaged criticism over the course of a decade. A rich addition to Dyer’s The Ongoing Moment, and heir to Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida, Susan Sontag’s On Photography, and John Berger’s Understanding a Photograph, See/Saw shows how a photograph can simultaneously record and invent the world, revealing a brilliant seer at work. It is a paean to art and art writing by one of the liveliest critics of our day.

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See/Saw: Looking at Photographs

See/Saw: Looking at Photographs

by Geoff Dyer
See/Saw: Looking at Photographs

See/Saw: Looking at Photographs

by Geoff Dyer

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Overview

A lavishly illustrated history of photography in essays by the author of Otherwise Known as the Human Condition


See/Saw shows how photographs frame and change our perspective on the world. Taking in photographers from early in the last century to the present day—including artists such as Eugène Atget, Vivian Maier, Roy DeCarava, and Alex Webb—the celebrated writer Geoff Dyer offers a series of moving, witty, prescient, surprising, and intimate encounters with images.


Dyer has been writing about photography for thirty years, and this tour de force of visual scrutiny and stylistic flair gathers his lively, engaged criticism over the course of a decade. A rich addition to Dyer’s The Ongoing Moment, and heir to Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida, Susan Sontag’s On Photography, and John Berger’s Understanding a Photograph, See/Saw shows how a photograph can simultaneously record and invent the world, revealing a brilliant seer at work. It is a paean to art and art writing by one of the liveliest critics of our day.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781644450444
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Publication date: 05/04/2021
Pages: 336
Sales rank: 610,102
Product dimensions: 6.90(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

About The Author
Geoff Dyer is the recipient of a Lannan Literary Award, the International Center of Photography’s Infinity Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He lives in Los Angeles and teaches at the University of Southern California

Table of Contents

Introduction 13

Part 1 Encounters

Eugène Atget's Paris 20

Alvin Langdon Coburn's London and New York 28

August Sander's People 36

Ilse Bing's Garbo 43

Helen Levitt's Streets 46

Vivian Maier 51

The Boy in a Photograph by Eli Weinberg 55

Roy DeCarava: John Coltrane, Ben Webster and Elvin Jones 61

Old Sparky: Andy Warhol 70

Dennis Hopper 78

They: William Eggleston in Black and White 85

Fred Herzog 93

Lee Friedlander's American Monuments 99

Bevan Davies's Los Angeles, 1976 105

Luigi Ghirri 108

Peter Mitchell's Scarecrows 114

Nicholas Nixon: The Brown Sisters 121

Lynn Saville and the Archaeology of Overnight 126

Philip-Lorca diCorcia's Magic 131

Alex Webb 137

Vegas Dreamtime: Fred Sigman's Motels 150

The Undeniable Struth 155

Andreas Gursky 162

Thomas Ruff 168

Prabuddha Dasgupta's Longing 176

Photojournalism and History Painting: Gary Knight 182

Pavel Maria Smejkal's Fotescapes 188

Chris Dorley-Brown's Corners 193

Dayanita Singh: Now We Can See 198

Oliver Curtis: Volte-face 208

Tom Hunter: The Persistence of Elegy 212

Fernando Maquieira and the Maja at Night 216

Spirit and Flesh in Naples 220

Zoe Strauss 226

Matt Stuart: Why He Does This Every Day 230

Stay-at-Home Street Photographers: Michael Wolf, Jon Rafman and Doug Rickard 235

Mike Brodie: A Period of Juvenile Prosperity 245

Chloe Dewe Mathews: Shot at Down 251

Part 2 Exposures

Franco Pagetti: Aleppo, Syria, 19 February 2013 260

Tomas van Houtryve: Philadelphia, USA, 10 November 2013 263

Joson Reed: Melbourne, Australia, 17 January 2014 266

Bullit Marquez: Manila, Philippines, 27 January 2014 269

Thomas Peter: Perevalne, Ukraine, 5 March 2014 272

Marko Djurica: Donetsk, Ukraine, 22 April 2014 275

Nikolay Doychinov: Draginovo, Bulgaria, 4 May 2014 278

Finbarr O'Reilly: Gaza Strip, 24 July 2014 281

Kim Ludbrook: Pretoria, South Africa, 11 September 2014 285

Justin Sullivan: Dellwood, Missouri, USA, 26 November 2014 288

Part 3 Writers

Roland Barthes: Camero Lucido 294

Michael Fried: Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before 303

John Berger: Understanding a Photograph 307

Chronological list of photographers discussed in Part One 315

Acknowledgements 317

Endnotes 321

Permission credits 331

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