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Artful Photographs From a Keen Curator and Photographer

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Everyone knows of John Szarkowski as the guru behind the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, but too few realize that beyond his scholarship and contribution to the placement of photography in an equal range as painting and sculpture, Szarkowski is a photographer of substance. This excellent book serves as a catalogue of a traveling exhibition of his works and it is quite revealing.

From elegant portraits such as the 1949 Robert Penn Warren example through his surveys of the natural phenomena of nature as he observes it, Szarkowski's eye focuses on the most mundane of images and from them creates masterworks. His preoccupation with trees is microscopically focused in a fascinating work entitled 'Graft', a grid of twelve images that reveal the arborist's magic of making a grafted tree.

Szarkowski's 'landscapes' of meadows, fields, and barns are luminous and endlessly fascinating to study. He creates naturally found still lifes from views through barn windows to trees and grasses outside. From this excellent sampling of his work and writing (and the accompanying fine essay by Sandra Phillips) this book justifies his placement in the realm of exceptional American photographers. Grady Harp, May 06