JOHN SZARKOWSKI: PHOTOGRAPHS INTRODUCTION according to SANDRA S.

JOHN SZARKOWSKI: PHOTOGRAPHS

INTRODUCTION according to SANDRA S. PHILLIPS BOSTON: BULFINCH PRES 2004/156 PP/84 TRITONE REPRODUCTIONS/$60 (HB)

John Szarkowski: Photographs has been a long-awaited affair in the history of twentieth-century photography. This hard-bound catalog of a retrospective display featuring Szar-kowski's own photographic work was published by the agency of Bulfinch Press under the choke supervision of Sandra S. Phillips of the San Francisco Museum of recent Art, where the touring exhibition began. This 10" by means of 10" hardcover book is tasteful, graceful and superbly printed. remarkably little of the original quality of Szarkowski's large format negatives and prints has been thrown away The tritone reproductions will definitely remind the reader that before replacing Edward Steichen as the Director of Photography at the Museum of present Art (MoMA). Szarkowski had been an accomplished black and white landscape photographer who had been awarded couple Guggenheim fellowships. Except for a 12-page chronology and Phillips' essay, "John Szarkowski, the Photographer," which appears at the fall of the curtain of the monograph, the solitary texts present in the volume are epistolary messages that the photographer sent to his parents, MoMA, Walker Evans, the University of Minnesota Pres and a not many friends. All point to the author's reason of measure and humor, his down-to-earth view of himself.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

chiefly of the images come from Szarkowski's pair main projects: The Idea of Louis Sullivan (1956) and The Face of Minnesota (1958) Then tread on the heels ofs his more recent photographic work that expresse his contemplative happiness of the quiet landscapes unrolling between the Great Lakes and the East Coast. In these images the photographer expands and asserts the poetic nature of his images within a consistent and careful use of light, tissue tone and composition. In his photography, Szarkowski does not ask the sublime. He is appease with either the picturesque or the mundane. And, of course, seen and captured in consequence of his view-camera, the mundane always reveals itself as picturesque. His trained estheticizing notice applied to the upside-down landscape onward the ground glass reveals camera work at its principally classical, most photographic and possibly its best.

Other enslaves pictured in the book are his dog and a not many more landscapes taken in the Sonoran due Those will certainly remind the viewer of Frederick Sommer's or to leeward Friedlander's images. Although taken in a different location and below a different sky, they still carry the same sense of serenity and simple pleasure experienced in the contemplation of a natural environment.

from one extremity to the other of the book, great care has been taken to focus alone on Szarkowski's photography. The single exceptions to these obvious guidelines are a not many incursions made by Phillips who tries to explain in what way Szarkowski's experience and vision as a photographer may have influenced his curatorial work at MoMA. In her essay, Phillips dedicates far more time to the photographer's work in his first 10 years of practice than to the evolution of his photographic organ of sight after seeing, handling, discussing, editing and exhibiting likewise many works during his manner [i]or[/i] principle of holding at the Department of Photography. In that regard readers would have certainly appreciated a modern interview of Szarkowski discussing his photography. as it was complementary information to the material provided according to this book would certainly have made it richer and deeper

This part and the traveling exhibition that it accompanies could have been an opportunity for a regard source on Szarkowski, the photographer. However, in spite of its many positive qualities, the catalog appear to bes to fall short of that goal. Instead it creates a ne for pair other much-needed studies: "John Szarkowski, the Director of Photography at MoMA," and "John Szarkowski, the Man, the Photographer, and the Curator." While waiting for like needed surveys, the readers of John Szarkowski: Photographs will find in the fine reproductions that it showcases feed for contemplation and a source of genuine visual pleasure.

BRUNO CHALIFOUR is a freelance critic and photographer, educator and PhD candidate.

...

Home