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The photographers need to discover new meanings and ways to express themselves in new images.John Szarkoswi was the curator of photography of the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York for many years. But the small text is of seminal importance for the understanding and the future of photography.Firstly, John Szarkowski draws a parallel between the art that forged photography - painting - and photography in itself. This is a book with many images and a few words. In the exhibits he put into action his thoughts, inclusively promoting color photography.As a photographer, I have learned a lot in those few pages. A comparison between the inclusion of a painting canvas and the exclusion of a camera viewfinder.He does not dismiss the photograph as something lost in the space and time, but as something in motion, even if only for 1/30 of a second. A Cartier Bresson's "decisive moment", not in the sense that is commonly accepted by most(a dramatic climax), but a visual one.The author emphasizes that this is a new art and needs to be still discovered in many senses. One of the conclusions that I draw is that the film and digital controversy is innocuous. Whatever image you capture through the viewfiender is photography.
The magical nature of recording light in our physical world is very clear. I've been a professional photographer for 35 years, (with a BFA from RISD) and this it the book that got me really juiced. Spend some time reviewing the images and concepts within. I've loved this book for 35 years. I have purchased many copies for others interested in photography and can fully recommend this for anyone who will take the time to see what is really contained within.Cheers,Gary
In most ways it foreshadows what Stephen Shore later did in the Nature of Photographs, a book that is also worth reading but that does not add a great deal to Szarkowski. . Both of these books help us to think through (as Shore's title suggests) what a photograph, as a photograph (two dimensional, bounded, stopped etc)., can and cannot do, and some of the main ways it does so. which this book will help you learn to do, I think you will conclude that this is a straightforward but rather deep book. People who are disappointed in it have either not read it carefully or had quite unrealistic expectations. If this seems elementary, well, it's apparent from most people's photographs that they haven't grasped the messages of these books. I suggest that most people's photos would be a lot better if they would spend more time with these sorts of fundamentals and less with the more technical works (not that technique can be ignored either).
Since the beginning of photography, the medium's position as art has been questioned. Photographers active participation in the creation of their art is something that connects their medium to other fine art. Photography has many similarities with traditional fine art.
However, the photographer knows better than this. Working with a process that has a physical relationship with reality means that instead of simply synthesizing a cohesive composition as with a painting or drawing, a photographer selects what is visible as well as what is excluded from the frame. Much of this skepticism resides in the belief that anyone can make a photograph, whereas a painting takes talent to create.
Photography is only different in the way it addresses these components. The Photographer's Eye is a collection of photographs from an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in which John Szarkowski articulates the elements intrinsic to photography that qualify the medium as an important part of art history.Szarkowski emphasizes the word `make' when describing the process of creating a photograph. While the traditional and most common phrase to describe this process has always been "to take a picture" Szarkowski's change in vocabulary reflects his belief that decision-making is the core of the photographic act.
Both processes are based on artistic decisions. The Photographer's Eye examines a selection of work that embodies and clarifies John Szarkowski's understanding of this participation.
This book is instructive by way of example. It has not a lot of text but many interesting photographs in categories. The categories reflect the photographic or artistic value of the chapter.
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