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