Dyer is one of my favorite writers, be it novels, essays, cultural criticism; he’s a master of all forms of the written word and an incredible autodidact, seemingly deeply read in almost every area of human endeavor.  It is this combination of information, wit, and fine style that makes his work so special.

This book, however, was a bit too much for me, primarily because reading in detail about the work of 40 photographers was a bit of overkill for one who is not deeply into that art form.  Now that each and every one of us with a cell phone can be a photographer, perhaps Dyer’s book has never been more needed or timely as he points out the tension between form and content, between spontaneity and composition, between capturing the everyday and the very unusual.  From the 19th C photographs of Paris by Atget through the 1970’s color work of Eggleston to the current Google Street sources of material for Mike Brodie, Dyer is exhaustive (and exhausting) in his overview of the art of photography.  One quibble I had was that he frequently refers to photographs that are not illustrated in the book, since there is only one example per photographer.  That led to some frustration for this reader.

The second section of the book is devoted to contemporary photographs of war and destruction, particularly poignant in view of the images emerging daily from Ukraine while the final chapters are an homage to the four writers whose work on photography were major influences on Dyer:  Barthes, Sontag, Berger, and that old favorite Walter Benjamin.

This is a book that will be an essential resource for anyone who is serious about photography’s history, techniques, and personalities.  For the general reader, it might be a bit much.