John Szarkowski
[Curator, critic, historian, and photographer, b. 1925, Ashland, Wisconsin, d. 2007, Pittsfield, Massachusetts.]

 To photograph beautifully a choice vestigial remnant of natural landscape is not necessarily to do a great favor to its future.... It is difficult today for an ambitious young photographer to photograph a pristine snowcapped mountain without including the parking lot in the foreground as a self-protecting note of irony. 
 Creative photography is not dependent upon museums’ approval. It belongs in our museums to elevate not itself, but those who look at it, and see it. (1962) 
 More convincingly than any other kind of picture, a photograph evokes the tangible presence of reality. It’s most fundamental use and its broadest acceptance has been as a substitute for the object itself—a simpler, more permanent, more clearly visible version of the plain fact. Our faith in the truth of a photograph rests on our belief that the lens in impartial, and will draw the subject as it is, neither nobler nor meaner. 
 The hard part isn’t the decisive moment or anything like that—it’s getting the film on the reel. 
 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. 
 Photography is a system of visual editing. At bottom, it’s 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. 
 The whole company of Arbus imitators, in the years after her death, thought they could do what she had done by using the camera simply and directly. Unfortunately, they were simple and direct people, whereas she was complex and patient. 
 Most issues of importance cannot be photographed. 
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