John Szarkowski, Photographer, Curator, and Critic, Dies at 81

Young Pine in Birches, 1954 © John Szarkowski In 1962, John Szarkowski was personally picked by Edward Steichen to take over the position as the Director of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art. He left his home in Wisconson to move to New York and bid farewell to Lake Superior, “No matter how hard I looked, the Lake gave no indication of concern at the possibility of my departing from its shores, and I finally decided that if it can get along without me, I can get along without it.” During his time as director (1962-1991), Szarkowski challenged the ways in which photographs could be considered. And for this, he now thought to be one of the most instrumental figures in promoting the medium’s acceptance as a valid vehicle for art.

In the early 1960’s, when Mr. Szarkowski (pronounced Shar-COW-ski) began his curatorial career, photography was commonly perceived as a utilitarian medium, a means to document the world. Perhaps more than anyone, Mr. Szarkowski changed that perception. For him, the photograph was a form of expression as potent and meaningful as any work of art… – NYT, 9 July 2007

When, in 1967, the young William Eggleston approached Szarkowski with a collection of his early photographs – photographs unlike any that Szarkowski had seen before – he took pleasure in introducing these unexpected images to the art world. At the time, color photography was rarely exhibited, considered by many not to be “art” for its association with the commercial side of image-making, selling products, and so on. Szarkowski writes about Eggleston’s photographs, “pictures of aunts and cousins and friends, of houses in the neighborhood and in neighboring neighborhoods, of local streets and side roads, local strangers, odd souvenirs, all of this appearing not at all as it might in a social document, but as it might in a diary, where the important meanings would be not public and general but private and esoteric.” Eggleston’s Color Photographs opened at MoMA in 1976, the first color exhibition in more than a decade. Accompanying the exhibition was William Eggleston’s Guide, the museum’s first color photography publication. Szarkowski’s books, including Looking at Photographs and The Photographer’s Eye, argue vigorously and eloquently for the value of excellent photographs. It’s with great sadness that I pass this on, as the New York Times reports:

John Szarkowski, a curator who almost single-handedly elevated photography’s status in the last half-century to that of a fine art, making his case in seminal writings and landmark exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, died in on Saturday in Pittsfield, Mass. He was 81.

John Szarkowski, New York, 1963 © Jacques Henri Lartigue This is the man who taught us how to look at photographs. Under his leadership, MoMA produced more than 160 exhibitions of photography. He helped make known many of the visionary photographers of the 20th century, including Garry Winogrand, Diane Arbus and Lee Friedlander, the selection of his monumental 1967 exhibition New Documents. For his love of words and pictures, Szarkowski will be forever cherished by those who knew him, those who knew of him, and the generations after him. More on Szarkowski’s death here.