Talking Pictures

John Szarkowski on the good, the bad and the flat in American photography
By HOLLY MYERS AND TOM CHRISTIE @ LA Weekly

There are few people alive today with more stories to tell about American photography than John Szarkowski, and probably none capable of telling them with quite the same charm. Born in Ashland, Wisconsin, in 1925, Szarkowski took up photography himself at a young age, secured two Guggenheim fellowships and published two books of his own before being tapped by Edward Steichen to take over the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art in 1962. His tenure at the museum lasted nearly 30 years and spanned a decisive period — perhaps the decisive period — in the institutionalization of the medium, a process in which Szarkowski himself played no small part. As U.S. News and World Report proclaimed in 1990, “Szarkowski’s thinking, whether Americans know it or not, has become our thinking about photography.”

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