oduphoto

John Szarkowski

The Photographer’s Eye

Within this reading, Szarkowski discusses how photography provided an outlet of processing that was based not on “synthesis but on selection. Paintings were made, but photographs were taken.” I find this statement made by Szarkowski to be very true to it’s meaning because it has challenged our “traditional habits of seeing” something for what it really is. Szarkowski says in his book that the first thing a photographer learned was that photography itself deals with the actual and that the world itself is an artist of incomparable inventiveness that must be clarified and recognized. I think that this means that the world is filled with an endless amount of opportunities that are waiting to be presented on a blank canvas. I think that this is why we love the images that have different or multiple meanings. I suppose this is also why we love how at no matter what second that photo is taken, it is always going to belong to that second and that there will be no other photo like it. He also says that the factuality of pictures, no matter how convincing, is different than the reality itself. I think that when people view art whether it’s photographs, painting, sculptures or whatever. They create their own opinions and interpretations based on what they as individuals see. What the artist intended is relevant and obviously very important but viewers often have a different thought-process and may even a different interpretation of what the artist is trying to convey. Still, Szarkowski makes it easier for us to understand this. He says that it is the photographer's problem to see not simply the reality before him or her but the still invisible picture, and to make his or her choices in terms of the latter. This is an artistic problem and that the photograph does not and could not lie.

JENNIFER