Geoff Dyer - Working the Room: Essays and Reviews, 1999-2010

You can hardly expect me to fall in love with a photograph.

Jawaharlal Nehru

This photograph was taken by Jacques Henri Lartigue on the Cap dAntibes in 1953. He was almost sixty by then, had been photographing for half a century. The picture is of a woman I dont know who propped up on a lilo or lounger on the terrace of some presumably luxurious hotel or villa. Shes wearing a swimsuit and one of those fun wigs made of strips of coloured paper that you can buy in party shops. You cant see her eyes, shes wearing a pair of big plastic sunglasses, but theres a hint (and this is the lovely flirty thing about the picture) that she is glancing up at the photographer which means that she is also glancing up at me, at us rather than reading the unbelievably serious book in her hands: Nehrus The Discovery ofIndia! It looks like its about 800 pages long and weighs a ton. It wouldnt be anything like the same picture if she was reading BridgetJoness Diary which, obviously, hadnt been published back then but thats another thing about the picture: it could have been taken yesterday, it could have been taken today (especially now that white sunglasses are in vogue again).

The book is a touch of genius either the genius of contrivance or of the moment but, actually, if any element of the picture were removed (the wig, the glasses, the painted nails or lipstick) it would be thoroughly diminished. Thats the thing about all great photos, though. Everything in them is essential even the inessential bits. It occurs to me that the things that are not in the photographs are also important. The inclusion of certain things can not just diminish a photograph but destroy it. In this case all the more remarkable in a photograph taken in 1953 the absence of a cigarette (so often considered an accessory of glamour) or ashtray is crucial to its allure and its contemporaneity. A cigarette would date or age the photograph as surely as it ages the faces of the people who smoke them. If there were any evidence of smoking I would have to look away. As it is, I cant tear my eyes away. I cant stop looking at her.

So who is she?

But there I go, forgetting one of my own rules about photography, namely that if you look hard enough a photo will always answer your question even if that answer comes in the form of further questions. Well, whoever she is, shes beautiful. Actually, I cant really tell if thats true, for the simple reason that I cant see enough of her face. But she must be beautiful, for an equally simple reason: because Im in love with her. Lartigue, too, I suspect. Now, plenty of men have photographed women they love but this picture depicts the moment when you fall in love.

Thats why the suggestion that she is looking up, meeting our gaze the photographers, mine is so important: this is the first moment when our eyes meet, the moment that each subsequent meeting of eyes will later contain. If this picture is of a woman Lartigue has been with for ten years it actually proves my point: that look, that meeting of the eyes, still contains the charge of the first unphotographed look from way back when. As for me, since Ive only just seen the photo, its a case of love at first sight. And that, I think, is why Lartigue became a model for so many fashion photographers. The most effective form of subliminal seduction the best way to sell the dresses or hats featured in photos is to make men fall in love with the woman wearing them, and photographers are all the time trying to emulate or simulate that feeling. With Lartigue, though, its for real, and the accessories on offer are what? A daft wig, some zany sunglasses and a hardback of The Discovery of India