New Documents [MoMA exhibition, 1967]
Citation
Szarkowski, John (curator). New Documents. Museum of Modern Art, New York. Exhibition: 28 February – 7 May 1967. [No original catalog was produced at the time. A 50th-anniversary retrospective catalog was published in 2017: Meister, Sarah Hermanson, ed. Arbus Friedlander Winogrand: New Documents, 1967. New York: MoMA, 2017. ISBN 978-0-87070-955-5.]
Tier justification
Tier 1: MoMA institutional exhibition record. The exhibition was curated by John Szarkowski as Director of the Department of Photography. For the curatorial statement (Szarkowski’s introduction), the 2017 MoMA retrospective catalog (Meister, ed., 2017) reproduces archival documentation. The exhibition itself and Szarkowski’s curatorial text are primary institutional records. The 2017 catalog is a university-press-quality MoMA publication with named curatorial authorship (Tier 1 / Tier 2 boundary).
Relevance
New Documents (1967) is the second major exhibition of the Szarkowski era and represents the most direct institutional counter-statement to the Family of Man aesthetic. Where Steichen mobilised documentary photography for humanist-universalist argument, Szarkowski’s wall text declared that a “new generation of photographers has directed the documentary approach toward more personal ends. Their aim has been not to reform life, but to know it.” The three photographers — Diane Arbus (32 photographs), Lee Friedlander (30 photographs), Garry Winogrand (32 photographs), totaling 94 black-and-white 35mm images — embodied an anti-rhetorical, anti-redemptive mode of documentary that became the dominant paradigm of American art photography in the late 1960s–70s. The exhibition was also shown at 14 additional institutions including Goucher College, McMaster University, Cornell University, and the San Francisco Museum of Art.
Key excerpts / pages
Facts and quotes confirmed via Wikipedia article on New Documents (fetched 2026-04-30):
- Exhibition dates: 28 February – 7 May 1967, MoMA, New York.
- Photographs: Diane Arbus (32), Lee Friedlander (30), Garry Winogrand (32) = 94 total black-and-white 35mm photographs.
- Szarkowski’s curatorial statement (quoted in Wikipedia, attributed to the exhibition wall text/press materials): “In the past decade a new generation of photographers has directed the documentary approach toward more personal ends. Their aim has been not to reform life, but to know it.”
- Also quoted (verbatim from Wikipedia, fetched 2026-04-30): “What unites these three photographers is not style or sensibility; each has a distinct and personal sense of the use of photography and the meanings of the world. What is held in common is the belief that the world is worth looking at, and the courage to look at it without theorizing.”
- No original catalog was produced at time of exhibition (confirmed via Wikipedia, fetched 2026-04-30).
- 2017 anniversary catalog: Meister, Sarah Hermanson, ed. Arbus Friedlander Winogrand: New Documents, 1967. New York: MoMA, 2017. ISBN 978-0-87070-955-5 (confirmed via search results, fetched 2026-04-30).
Notes
- MoMA calendar page (moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/3487) not fetched in this session.
- Flagged
verified: falsefor the catalog because no original catalog exists and the 2017 MoMA book was not read in this session. - Szarkowski quotes above are taken from Wikipedia’s article on New Documents (fetched 2026-04-30), which cites: Gefter, Philip. “John Szarkowski, Curator of Photography, Dies at 81.” New York Times, 9 July 2007; and Mora, Gilles. The Last Photographic Heroes. Abrams, 2007.
- Cross-references:
src-szarkowski-1964-photographers-eye-exh,src-moma-1962-szarkowski-appt,src-moma-1955-catalog. -
The 80 colour slides by Winogrand shown at non-MoMA venues are noted in Wikipedia as a variant element of the touring exhibition.
- Perspective note. The Steichen→Szarkowski curatorial succession is itself a contested narrative in photography historiography. The framing here describes the formalist shift descriptively; for the critical reading that Szarkowski’s program enabled a depoliticized, formalist canon at the expense of Family of Man-style social address, see Sekula 1981 (
src-sekula-1981, in repo) and Christopher Phillips, “The Judgment Seat of Photography,” October 22 (Autumn 1982): 27–63 (NOT in repo as of this batch; flagged for a future entry). - Cross-reference:
src-sekula-1981.