Vincent Serbin – Photogram no.65 (2009)
What fine art photography is and today entails is largely due to the legacy of John Szarkowski.
A talented photographer in his own right, he’s now known primarily, however, as the Director of Photography at MoMA for just shy of three decades; where he proved almost singularly responsible for shepherding the black sheep medium that was photography into the fold of western canonical art historical and critical acceptance as capital A Art.
One of his endearing critical notions was that photographs function in only one of two ways:
- As windows looking out onto the world, or
- Mirrors in which we come face to face with ourselves.