Thaddeus John Szarkowski (December 18, 1925 – July 7, 2007) was an American photographer, curator, historian, and critic. From 1962 to 1991 Szarkowski was the director of photography at New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).

Early life and career

He was born and grew up in the small northern Wisconsin city of Ashland, and became interested in photography at age eleven. In World War II Szarkowski served in the U.S. Army, after which he graduated in 1947 in art history from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He then began his career as a museum photographer at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. At this time he was also a practicing art photographer; he had his first solo show at the Walker Art Center in 1949, the first of a number of solo exhibitions. In 1954 Szarkowski received the first of two Guggenheim Fellowships, resulting in the book The Idea of Louis Sullivan (1956). Between 1958 and 1962, he returned to rural Wisconsin. There, he undertook a second Guggenheim fellowship in 1961, researching into ideas about wilderness and the relationship between people and the land.

Museum of Modern Art

New York's Museum of Modern Art appointed Szarkowski director of its department of photography, beginning July 1, 1962. Edward Steichen chose Szarkowski as his successor. In 1973 Szarkowski began service to the National Endowment for the Arts as one of its three photography panelists. In 1973 Szarkowski published Looking at Photographs, a practical set of examples on how to write about photographs. The book is still required reading for students of photography, and argues for the importance of looking carefully and bringing to bear every bit of intelligence and understanding possessed by the viewer. Szarkowski has also published numerous books on individual photographers, including, with Maria Morris Hamburg, the definitive four-volume work on the photography of Atget. He wrote Mirrors and Windows: American Photography Since 1960 (1978) identifying a dichotomy between strategies of pictorial expression in American photography; "It seems to this viewer that the difference between [Minor] White and [Robert] Frank relates to the difference between the goal of self-expression and the goal of exploration." Though not all photographers in the book are American (Frank was Swiss, for example), the pictures were taken and/or exhibited there. The publication is divided almost equally into Parts I (pp. 29–86) and II (pp. 87–148). His 'Mirror' analogy represents self-reflective photography, represented in the book by Jerry Uelsmann, Paul Caponigro, Ralph Gibson, Duane Michals, Judy Dater and others; while the idea of the 'Window' is found in the documentary approach, exemplified by inclusions of work by Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, Henry Wessel, Joel Meyerowitz, and Garry Winogrand. He taught at Harvard, Yale, and New York University, and continued to lecture and teach. From 1983 to 1989, he was an Andrew Dickson White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University. For the 150th anniversary of the invention of photography he curated a final major exhibition before his retirement, and wrote an accompanying book: Photography Until Now. In 1990, U.S. News & World Report said: "Szarkowski's thinking, whether Americans know it or not, has become our thinking about photography".

Retirement

In 1991 Szarkowski retired from his post at the MoMA and became the museum's photography director emeritus. He was succeeded by Peter Galassi, the Joel and Anne Ehrenkranz chief curator of the department of photography at The Museum of Modern Art. Szarkowski continued to write and curate exhibitions at MoMA and elsewhere, like Alfred Stieglitz at Lake George and Ansel Adams at 100. Another monograph on Atget was also published. He returned to making his own photographic work, mostly attempting to picture a spirit of place in the American landscape. In 2005 he co-curated his first retrospective of his own work with Sandra S. Phillips at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, subsequently exhibited at MoMA in early 2006. In retirement, Szarkowski served on the boards of several of the mutual funds sold by Dreyfus Corporation. Szarkowski died from complications of a stroke on July 7, 2007, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, aged 81.

Publications of photographic works

Exhibitions curated by Szarkowski and accompanying publications

''If not indicated otherwise, all books were published by the Museum of Modern Art, New York. References link to the individual webpage of the exhibition in the museum's digitized archives (MAID). The pages comprise installation views, the original press releases of each exhibition with extensive text, the text of the wall label written by Szarkowski and a complete checklist of the works displayed. The exhibition catalogues (until 1981) are oftentimes also available in digitized form. Exhibitions without accompanying catalogue are simply integrated here, as are the only books not published in conjunction with an exhibition: Looking at Photographs (1973) and the 2000 monograph on Atget.''

Writing contributions by Szarkowski

Documentaries about Szarkowski