Book Review

The Photographer's Eye by John Szarkowski is back in print after years of being off the shelf. It starts off with a brief history of photography and makes some interesting notes such as photography being process based, not on synthesis, but on selection. At the time of writing this book there was still a lot of reluctance from the art world to accept photography as an art. He quotes Baudelaire "This industry, by invading territories of art, has become arts most mortal enemy."

He talks about the explosion in popularity in photography in the 19th century and even by the end of the 18th century, poor men knew what their ancestors looked like.
In some ways what happened with the introduction of the hand held camera is similar to what is happening now with digital cameras, but on a much larger scale.

The main emphasis of the book is on his explanation of the characteristics that he believes make up a photograph. He explains that there are five characteristics that are interdependent aspects of photography that may contribute to the formulation of a phenomena of photography.

The five characteristics he discusses are The Thing Itself, The Detail, The Frame, Time and Vantage Point.

Some of the more interesting points from his explanations of each of the five characteristics were;

Frame - he discusses what a picture actually shows. Is it a story? Usually not the whole one because the photographer decided to frame a photograph in a particular way.

Time - he talks about the accidental blurs that happened during the necessary long exposures of old plate film, and suggests this could have been the starting point for modern photographers using longer exposures to provide a particular effect. He also talks about Henri Cartier-Bresson's 'decisive moment' as being a picture, not a story.

His definition of an artist is one who seeks new structures in which to order and simplify his sense of the reality of life.
I didn't quite agree with this definition, but perhaps it was more relevant to the time of his work. I prefer to think that an artist is someone who creates something that is looked at, felt or heard and provides a feeling either of what the artist was feeling at the time of his creation or a feeling that the artist had in mind to share.

By far the most interesting thing about this book for me was the way in which he or his publisher has chosen the layout of the photographs. Each double page has at least two photographs that compliment each other or have subtle similarities such as both being of people, buildings verticals, shapes, textures etc. It's quite interesting seeing these similarities and complementary choices.