John Szarkowski: An Interview
Citation
Haworth-Booth, Mark. “John Szarkowski: An Interview.” History of Photography 15, no. 4 (Winter 1991): 302–306. DOI: 10.1080/03087298.1991.10442507.
Relevance
John Szarkowski (1925–2007) succeeded Edward Steichen as Director of Photography at MoMA in 1962, inheriting the Department of Photography that Steichen had built and the legacy of The Family of Man (1955). Szarkowski’s tenure redefined photographic modernism in a direction that implicitly moved away from the humanist-documentary paradigm of The Family of Man toward a more formalist approach (see The Photographer’s Eye, 1966). A 1991 interview in History of Photography — the leading peer-reviewed journal in the field — by the Victoria and Albert Museum curator Mark Haworth-Booth provides a primary account of how Szarkowski understood his relationship to Steichen’s legacy and the curatorial inheritance.
A WebSearch snippet (from a secondary source; the interview itself was not fetched in this round) attributes the following anecdote to Szarkowski regarding his MoMA appointment: “Steichen said, ‘Well, Alfred, it’s a gamble’ and Alfred [Barr] smiled and we all shook hands.” If verified against the primary text, this anecdote characterizes the informal, subjective nature of the MoMA curatorial succession. The quote is NOT confirmed from a primary fetch; treat as provisional (see Notes).
Tier 2: History of Photography is an enumerated Tier-2 journal per CREDIBILITY.md.
Key excerpts / pages
- Access status (2026-04-30): Taylor & Francis DOI page (
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03087298.1991.10442507) attempted via WebFetch but returned a permission denial. Body text NOT consulted in this round. - Title (“John Szarkowski: An interview”), journal (History of Photography), volume (15), issue (4), year (1991), pages (302–306), and interviewer (Mark Haworth-Booth) confirmed from a WebSearch result citing the Taylor & Francis page directly. Reviewer identification (Haworth-Booth as a V&A curator) and the Steichen appointment anecdote (verbatim: “‘Well, Alfred, it’s a gamble’”) confirmed from WebSearch snippet.
- DOI (10.1080/03087298.1991.10442507) confirmed from the Taylor & Francis URL structure.
- No verbatim text from the interview body quoted; full text behind institutional paywall.
Notes
verified: false: Taylor & Francis page not fetched (permission denied). Bibliographic data (title, journal, vol., issue, year, pages, DOI, interviewer) confirmed from WebSearch results. The Steichen appointment anecdote was in a WebSearch snippet from a secondary source, not from a direct fetch of the interview.- A second Szarkowski interview in History of Photography (Vol. 19, No. 2, 1995, pp. 135–142) was conducted by Doug Nickel; it covers Szarkowski’s theoretical program (“the vernacular image,” formal properties of photography). That interview is a companion piece filed separately as
src-nickel-1995-szarkowski-interview(created in this same batch session). - Cross-reference to
src-sandeen-1995: Sandeen’s study of the FoM would be the scholarly counterpart to Szarkowski’s curatorial memoir. Szarkowski’s critical distance from the humanist-documentary FoM paradigm is a key element of the post-1962 MoMA history that Sandeen’s study navigates. - Cross-reference to
src-history-of-photography-journal-founding-1977(pre-existing entry for the HoP journal itself). - The interview appeared in the same year (1991) as Solomon-Godeau’s Photography at the Dock (
src-solomon-godeau-1991-photography-at-dock), placing both in the same moment of critical-retrospective assessment.