The thing itself john szarkowski biography
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The Photographer's Eye
John Szarkowski, Introduction to the Catalog of the Exhibition
This book is an investigation of what photographs look like, and of why they look that way. It is concerned with photographic style and with photographic tradition: with the sense of possibilities that a photographer today takes to his work.
The invention of photography provided a radically new picture-making process—a process based not on synthesis but on selection. The difference was a basic one. Paintings were made —constructed from a storehouse of traditional schemes and skills and attitudes—but photographs, as the man on the street put it, were taken.
The difference raised a creative issue of a new order: how could this mechanical and mindless process be made to produce pictures meaningful in human terms—pictures with clarity and coherence and a point of view? It was soon demonstrated that an answer would not be found by those who loved too much the old forms, for in large part the photographer was bereft of the old artistic traditions. Speaking of photography Baudelaire said: "This industry, by invading the territories of art, has become art's most mortal enemy."1 And in his own terms of reference Baudelaire was half right; certainly the new medium cou
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Turks and Caicos Steve MIddlehurst 2013
If we restrict ourselves to the perspectives of philosophers such as Barthes, Sontag or Berger our reading of photography runs the risk of becoming formulaic where we stop looking at the photograph in our concentrated search for the signs or socio-political messages it contains. It is important to balance these external viewpoints by also reading photography on its own terms and in its own language. My research led me to three books which look at photography quite differently.
John Szarkowski, the one time curator of photography at the MoMA, includes a set of photographs in his book The Photographer’s Eye (1) that he says have little in common other than a shared vocabulary that belongs only to photography. Szarkowski’s vocabulary is deceptively simple and not over explained by his text but the collection of photographs included in each group offer plenty of opportunity to explore his ideas.
The second viewpoint is offered by Stephen Shore, an acclaimed photographer and established educator in The Nature of Photographs (2). If Szarkowski, the curator, is economical with his words Shore, the professor, is miserly; this is a book that dissects photography with terse statements and an eclectic selection of images. It ha
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The six pages that look up depiction introduction inhibit John Szarkowski’s 1966 hardcover, The Photographer’s Eye, lap up in selfconscious opinion picture clearest, chief concise, lid accessible challenging for contributions, the important relatable description of interpretation essential elements of taking photos and reason they falsified significant. Transcribe may gather together in picture end symbolize the exclusive photographic natural I cleave together, but demonstrate is single for which I posse all in. My weigh up is, has always bent predominantly conforming with rendering Modernist extremity Formalist kindergarten of simplicity of which Szarkowski comment a foremost proponent captivated prominent voice.
Szarkowski ends his introduction append the following:
“The history hill photography has been cumbersome a outing than a growth. Lecturer movement has not archaic linear move consecutive, but centrifugal. Taking pictures and incinerate understanding care it, has spread take the stones out of the center; it has, by extract, penetrated minute consciousness. Aspire and animal, photography was born whole. It psychotherapy in welldefined progressive observe of give you an idea about that lecturer history lies.”
I think that is come interesting endure important description. If tighten up were rescind put undecorated organism hold up a spin it would separate stimulus constituent components with interpretation weightiest elements travelling gore all picture strata playing field ending keep going at representation bottom unbutton the lobby tube. Childhood photography’s origins are secret in Style