12/31/07 - Looking At Photographs

Three of my favorite images from the book "Looking At Photographs:100 Pictures from the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art" by John Szarkowski (1973).



The book has fallen out-of-print but is worth tracking down. For the photos, of course, but also for the text, which provides perceptive ways of seeing and basic historical context.


text excerpts by Szarkowski

New Orleans, 1968
by Lee Friedlander




"The larger, dark figure reflected in the shop window is (obviously) the photographer.... The small figure in the bright square over the photographer's heart is also the photographer, reflected in a mirror in the rear of the store."

"It would of course be possible to draw a diagram, with lines and arrows, and shaded planes, to explain crudely what the picture itself explains precisely. But what conceivable purpose would this barbarism serve?"



At the Cafe, Chez Fraysse. 1958
by Robert Doisneau




"Regardless of historic fact, however, a picture is about what it appears to be, and this picture is about a potential seduction. One is tempted to believe that even the painters of the eighteenth century never did the subject so well. The girl's secret opinion of the proceedings so far is hidden in her splendid self-containment; for the moment she enjoys the security of absolute power. One arm shields her body, her hand touches her glass as tentatively as if it were the first apple. The man for the moment is defenseless and vulnerable; impaled on the hook of his own desire, he has committed all his resources, and no satisfactory line of retreat remains. Worse yet, he is older than he should be, and knows that one way or another the adventure is certain to end badly. To keep this presentiment at bay, he is drinking his wine more rapidly than he should.

"The picture, however, precludes questions of the future. This pair, if less romantically conceived than the lovers on John Keats' urn, are equally safe, here in the picture, from the consequences of real life.


Untitled. 1962
by Garry Winogrand
(this shot MUST have also been part of Winogrand's 'Animals' exhibition)




"Consider Garry Winogrand's picture: so rich in fact and suggestion, and so justly resolved; more complex and more beautiful than the movie that Alfred Hitchcock might derive from it.