Szarkowski Assessed

'Master of the Medium'

Maria Morris Hambourg on John Szarkowski, 1925-2007

By Maria Morris Hambourg, Artforum

It is rare for a curator to reign with virtual sovereignty over an entire medium, but during his nearly three decades as director of the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (from 1962 until his retirement in 1991), John Szarkowski did. His outpouring of exhibitions and catalogues at the pulpit of modern art and photography placed him on a singular pedestal in a recurrent spotlight, but it was less these conditions than his penetrating mind, eloquence, and perspective that made his opinion matter so much. In a field dominated by journalism and almost devoid of serious critical thought, Szarkowski was a flare of intellect, a lone poet among jobbing professionals. One would be hard-pressed to name another instance in which one man's vision of an unrecognized art simultaneously created and educated its audience....

READ ON at Artforum

Maria Morris Hambourg coauthored the four-volume Work of Atget (Museum of Modern Art, 1981-85) with John Szarkowski and was head of the Photography Department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1992 until 2004.

(Photo: Paul Huf, John Szarkowski Succeeds Edward Steichen, MoMA, ca. 1962.)

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David Emerick

Featured Comment by ycl: "A great read—and a somewhat unusual one in not only correctly praising Szarkowski's enormous contribution to photography, but also pointing out some of his limits—in particular the narrowness of his aesthetics and of his view of what was an appropriate use of this medium. I was just reading A.D. Coleman's Light Readings this week, which includes a scathing critique of Szarkowski's reign as King of the photographic establishment (in the form of an 'Open Letter' to MoMA's Director and Board of Trustees), and points out some of the same weaknesses that this article discusses.

"Coleman describes Szarkowski's 'esthetic' as 'rigid and narrow,' pointing out that he 'has been notably unsympathetic to: imagery subjected to visible handwork or post-exposure manipulation; color imagery [add: with the exception of Eggleston], whether "straight" or applied; directorial imagery; mixed-media work; and serial imagery, among other forms and modes.' Coleman summarizes Szarkowski as believing in 'a severely reductivist formalism as the essence of creative photography,' one 'restricted almost entirely to the documentary genre, centered around Walker Evans as the first conscious articulator thereof.'

"I have personally found Szarkowski's The Photographer's Eye to be enormously educational, and its focus on formalist-modernist notions of 'what should be accomplished using a particular medium' quite enlightening. Nonetheless, such a view does seems unduly narrow, especially in retrospect. As the author suggests, the recent, terrific Jeff Wall exhibition, e.g., may not have occurred under Szarkowski's watch. Additionally, Szarkowski's designation of Eggleston as the father of color (art) photography seems now clearly erroneous—see, e.g., Saul Leiter's much earlier color work from the 1950s and the work of the several European photographers recently featured in the Martin Parr-curated 'Colour before Color.'

"P.S. MoMA's current showing of its permanent collection includes several of Szarkowski's post-MoMA images, for those who are interested. They are worth a look simply for (perhaps ...) confirming one wag's opinion that Szarkowski was 'the perfect man for the MoMA job'—not because he was a photographer, but because he was a good-enough-but-not-great photographer who could recognize greatness in others.' "

Comments

[Bill Mitchell]

Very impressive article -- used autodidact and praxis, not just in the same article, but in the same sentence. WOW!

[Mike]

Whatsamatter, your computer doesn't have a dictionary? ;-)

Mike J.

[Bill Mitchell]

"Whatsamatter, your computer doesn't have a dictionary? ;-)"
Mike, it's got all sorts of stuff that I don't know how to use (or even that it's available).
PS, Neither word is in the Webster's Scholastic which is always right by my keyboard, and very heavily used.

[Mike]

Bill,
Autodidact, n., A self-taught person.

Praxis, n., 1. Practical application or exercise of a branch of learning. 2. Habitual or established practice; custom.

Just a hint about computers and dictionaries: if you type a word into Google and hit return, look at the blue band near the top that's labeled "Web" on the left. On the right it will give you the number of hits the word pulled up, plus a link that says "definition" and the time the search took. When I looked up "praxis," this line said,

"Results 1 - 10 of about 75,900,000 for praxis [definition]. (0.12 seconds)"

If you click on "definition," it will pull up definitions from several online dictionaries, which you can then compare. "Praxis" also has a discursive little entry from the Oxford Philosophy Dictionary which relates the word to its Aristotelian origins and its recent Marxist elaborations.

Pretty handy--I actually got rid of my paper dictionary last year, something I thought I'd never, ever do.

All best,

Mike J.

[John Camp]

There's an interesting junction here between the Szarkowski article and the previous post on style -- Szarkowski being notable (IMHO) as probably the most well-known photographer who didn't have one. And it reflects something I was arguing on that post, that a great photographer needs an obsession, and you really can't find that in Szarkowski's work. You look at his stuff on roads and crossroads, and it looks like something he sat down and thought up, rather than something that really hooked him. His obsession, I think, was photography itself -- he was a metaphotographer -- and he might have done some serious work if he'd thought of rephotographing photographs, or photographers at work & play, or Leicas in the sunshine & in fog...8-p

But, basically, I think he was one of those guys who was in love with the art and the life, but didn't do the actual work that well.

I have to add, if somebody threatened to carve on my tombstone, "Used autodidact and praxis in the same sentence," I'd opt for cremation.

JC

[Eric Jeschke]

Interesting read. A particularly, interesting comment in regard to his feelings about formal art education, to wit:

While democratically delighting in the vernacular of the species, Szarkowski could not help preferring photographs that consistently revealed keen “intelligence, precise intention, and coherence”—in other words, pictures made by talented, committed artists. This elite was not likely to be found among those who labored to make their pictures look artistic, like Impressionist or Constructivist paintings, for example, nor among those who earned academic degrees in art (propositions he found faintly ludicrous). Rather, to his mind, true artists were generally autodidacts who discovered in their photographic praxis a school of experience and in their subjects the resonance of larger meanings. He had learned that neither the older arts nor the classroom afforded adequate instruction in photography; this, he felt, could only arise from the individual’s vital examination of the world.

Kind of interesting in light of the recent discussion regarding MFAs and photography programs.

[chuck kimmerle]

I found it a bit sad that Szarkowski didn't take many photos in his later years as his knowledge and experience with world class imagery probably made him hesitant to shoot himself. I guess, perhaps, that too much knowledge may not be all it's cracked up to be.

Of course, I'm inferring this from the end of the article rather than from any first hand knowledge, but it's still an interesting thought. I can now be grateful for my ignorance.

[Cemal Ekin]

May I humbly suggest that a collection like "The Idea of Louis Sullivan" does not emerge without "an obsession." JS was an excellent photographer who, in my opinion, put aside his art to better promote the "Art of Photography." His later book "JS Photographs" offers many superb photographs. That said, in his position as the director of the Department of Photography at MoMA he needed, more than the ability to produce art, and showed a vision to place the art of photography squarely in the field of art.

I do agree with John Camp that "His obsession ... was photography itself" and that "he was one of those guys who was in love with the art and the life". Wonderful qualities in a person I might add.

CE