John Szarkowski Quotes

• To quote out of context is the essence of the photographer's craft.

  John Szarkowski

  Photography, Essence, Crafts

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• It isn't what a picture is of, it is what it is about.

  John Szarkowski

  It Is What It Is

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• Because we see reality in different ways, we must understand that we are looking at different truths rather than the truth and that, therefore, all photographs lie in one way or another.

  John Szarkowski

  Lying, Reality, Different

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• The basic material of photographs is not intrinsically beautiful. It's not like ivory or tapestry or bronze or oil on canvas. You're not supposed to look at the thing, you're supposed to look through it. It's a window.

  John Szarkowski

  Beautiful, Photography, Ivory

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• Photography is a system of visual editing. At bottom, it is a matter of surrounding with a frame a portion of one's cone of vision, while standing in the right place at the right time. Like chess, or writing, it is a matter of choosing from among given possibilities, but in the case of photography the number of possibilities is not finite but infinite.

  John Szarkowski

  Photography, Writing, Numbers

  William Eggleston, John Szarkowski (2002). “William Eggleston's Guide”

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• Photography is a contest between a photographer and the presumptions of approximate and habitual seeing. The contest can be held anywhere.

  John Szarkowski

  Photography, Photographer, Contests

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• The world now contains more photographs than bricks, and they are, astonishingly, all different.

  John Szarkowski

  Different, World, Bricks

  William Eggleston, John Szarkowski (2002). “William Eggleston's Guide”

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• A skillful photographer can photograph anything well.

  John Szarkowski

  Photographer, Photograph, Wells

  E. J. Bellocq, Lee Friedlander, John Szarkowski (1970). “E.J. Bellocq: Storyville portraits, photographs from the New Orleans red-light district, circa 1912”

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• The goal is not to make something factually impeccable, but seamlessly persuasive.

  John Szarkowski

  Goal, Persuasive, Impeccable

  William Eggleston, John Szarkowski (2002). “William Eggleston's Guide”

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• The very best pictures adapt themselves to many changes in meaning.

  John Szarkowski

  Photography, Best Picture

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• Photography is the easiest thing in the world if one is willing to accept pictures that are flaccid, limp, bland, banal, indiscriminately informative, and pointless. But if one insists in a photograph that is both complex and vigorous it is almost impossible

  John Szarkowski

  Photography, World, Impossible

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• The simplicity of photography lies in the fact that it is very easy to make a picture. The staggering complexity of it lies in the fact that a thousand other pictures of the same subject would have been equally easy.

  John Szarkowski

  Photography, Lying, Simplicity

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• A photographer's best work is, alas, generally done for himself.

  John Szarkowski

  Done, Photographer, Best Work

  "Looking at Photographs: 100 Pictures from the Collection of The Museum of Modern Art". Book by John Szarkowski, 1973.

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• The invention of photography provided a radically new picture-making process - a process based not on synthesis but on selection. The difference was a basic one. Paintings were made - constructed from a storehouse of traditional schemes and skills and attitudes - but photographs, as the man on the street put, were taken.

  John Szarkowski

  Photography, Attitude, Taken

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• Photography is choosing where to point your eye-cone.

  John Szarkowski

  Photography, Eye, Cones

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• Pure photography is a system of picture-making that describes more or less faithfully what might be seen through a rectangular frame from a particular vantage point at a given moment.

  John Szarkowski

  Photography, Might, Vantage Point

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• A camera has interesting ideas of its own.

  John Szarkowski

  Photography, Ideas, Interesting

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• What's happening is that people are making a billion photographs a year of their cats, frequently with the cats wearing costumes. Do you think I should be doing shows of cat photography?

  John Szarkowski

  Photography, Cat, Thinking

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• Like an organism, photography was born whole. It is in our progressive discovery of it that its history lies.

  John Szarkowski

  Photography, Lying, Discovery

  "Was John Szarkowski the most influential person in 20th-century photography?" by Sean O'Hagan, www.theguardian.com. July 20, 2010.

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• Whatever else a photograph may be about, it is inevitably about photography, the container and vehicle of all its meanings.

  John Szarkowski

  Photography, May, Vehicle

  William Eggleston, John Szarkowski (2002). “William Eggleston's Guide”

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• The central act of photography, the act of choosing and eliminating, forces a concentration on the picture edge - the line that separates in from out - and on the shapes that are created by it.

  John Szarkowski

  Photography, Shapes, Lines

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• Photography's central sense of purpose and aesthetic: the precise and lucid description of significant fact.

  John Szarkowski

  Photography, Purpose, Facts

  "The lure of the street" by Geoff Dyer, www.theguardian.com. May 30, 2008.

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• Luck is the attentive photographer's best teacher.

  John Szarkowski

  Photography, Teacher, Luck

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• Trained as a musician, [photographer Ansel] Adams understood the richness of variation that could be unfolded from a simple theme.

  John Szarkowski

  Music, Simple, Variation

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• The photographer’s vision convinces us to the degree that the photographer hides his hand.

  John Szarkowski

  Hands, Convince Us, Vision

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