John Szarkowski : introduction to The Photographer’s Eye

An investigation into what photos look like and why they look that way

John Szarkowski

•  Photographer, curator, historian and critic •  Director of Photography at The Museum of

Modern Art, 1962- 1991

•  Photography was a radically new picture-making process- a process based not on synthesis but on selection

•  “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?”

•  5 characteristics and problems that are inherent in the medium of photography

•  The Thing Itself •  The Detail •  The Frame •  Time •  Vantage Point

The Thing Itself

The Thing Itself The photographer learned that “the factuality of his pictures, no matter how convincing and unarguable, was a different thing than reality itself.”

Dorothea Lange Migrant Mother Nipomo, California 1936

“The subject and the picture were not the same thing, although they would aferwards seem so.”

Robert Frank Parade, Hoboken, NJ, 1955, from the book The Americans

Barbara Probst

Lori Nix California Forest Fire, 2002

The Detail

The Detail Refers to photography’s compelling clarity and also to the fact that photography can only isolate a fragment of reality.

Harold Edgerton

Milk Drop Coronet, 1957

Harry Calahan

Eleanor, Chicago, 1947

Taisuke Koyama

Nick Ut Vietnam Napalm 1972

“The function of these pictures was not to make the story clear, it was to make it real.”

James Nachtwey Rwanda 1994

The Frame

The Frame The central act of choosing and eliminating

Bill Owens, from Leisure, 1973

William Eggleston Greenwood, Mississippi, 1973

“The photographer looked at the world as though it was a scroll painting, unrolled from hand to hand, exhibiting an infinite number of croppings- of compositions- as the frame moved onwards”

Lee Friedlander Mount Rushmore, South Dakota, 1969

Time

Time All photographs are time exposures, of shorter or longer duration.

Ellen Kooi

Harold Edgerton .30 Bullet piercing an apple 1964

Francesca Woodman Space 1975-1978

Ken Kitano

Hiroshi Sugimoto

Vantage Point

Vantage Point

Allows photographers to present their subject from unexpected points of view.

Sally Mann

Tony Mendoza, from Flowers, 2004-2007

Gerco de Ruijter Baumschule

Weegee (Arthur Fellig) Brooklyn School Children See Gambler Murdered in Street, 1941

Barbara Probst, N.Y.C., 249 W. 34th St, 01.02.05, 1:04 p.m.

Ann Hamilton Face to Face 2001

•  The Thing Itself •  The Frame •  The Detail •  Time •  Vantage Point