AmericansuburbX Interview with John Szarkowski (link)
Photographer Unknown
Brilliant, brilliant interview with Szarkowski. It gets especially good when he stops putting up with the shitty, academic questions.
- His pointers on good early writing on photography is a good resource.
- “Part of the problem is doubtless our difficulty in accepting the fact that luck is a great and powerful force in photography; we tend to be interested only in intention, because it makes the enterprise feel more important. I think it would be just as important-and less boring—if we accepted the fact that luck is everywhere active, if not determinant, and that the world would be pretty gray without it.”
- Chose the photographers he did because of luck, chance, not because he was acting as a gatekeeper.
- “Nevertheless, I am not interested in these people because they used the camera simply and directly. Why, unless they were trying to earn their MFA degree under a very obtuse professor, would they use it any other way? I am interested in them because of the playful eccentricity of their work or its gravity and justice, or the disinterested precision of their eyes, and the acuity of their minds and the depth of their passion, or the sweetness of their sympathy for the wonders and terrors of the world. One might say that I am interested in them as artists.”
- “Of all the people on your list, surely none was less simple and direct, as a person, than Evans. He was complex, sophisticated, secretive, unpredictable and capable of deviousness, none of which affected his superior manners or his loyalty as a friend—although that loyalty was expressed according to a code that remained resolutely secret.”
- “So, to get to your question: In my view, Evans, Winogrand and Eggleston were alert to all and any clues, hints and sources that crossed their path, whether encountered in the Louvre or the postcard stand, but I do not think that there is with any of them an attempt to adopt and adapt any vernacular style or method. Rather, it was a matter of allowing into the mix of picture-making potentials subject matter and techniques that had not been considered by the previous generations to be the proper concern of serious photography.”
- “If I understand your question, you are suggesting that fecund artists are likely to be inferior to artists who produce little. According to that test, Paul Dukas should be considered at least 100 times greater than Haydn. (I am assuming that Dukas wrote at least a few things other than the Apprentice, although I don’t know what.) I doubt that you would agree to so ludicrous a proposition, but I really don’t know what else you might mean.”
… Oh fuck it. Just go and read the whole thing. It’s all gold.
Click the link in the title.
Posted 2 years ago
