The Photographer's Eye: A Way of Seeing
January 19 - April 20, 2008

Douglas Mellor (American b.1947), Still Life with Melon, 1994, Gelatin Silver Print
Collection Museum of Photographic Arts

This [is] an investigation of what photographs look like,
and why they look that way.

[As Szarkowski said in The Photographer's Eye]

Drawn from MoPA’s permanent collection, this exhibition interprets the groundbreaking book, The Photographer’s Eye (1966) by John Szarkowski, now in reprint and available at MoPA’s bookstore. As director of photography at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), NY, from 1962 to 1991, Szarkowski curated 160 exhibitions. He championed the careers of visionary photographers such as Garry Winogrand, Diane Arbus, and Lee Friedlander, among many others.

With his passing in July 2007, this exhibition acts as an homage to Szarkowski's influential career. MoPA will use The Photographer's Eye as a template from which to view over 120 photographs from its permanent collection, and to celebrate the museum's 25th anniversary through a renewed commitment to collecting.

As a way of understanding what the medium uniquely offers to the visual arts, his thesis introduces five characteristics inherent to photography: “The Thing Itself,” “The Detail,” “The Frame,” “Time,” and “Vantage Point.” MoPA's exhibition will explore these categories through the work of Garry Winogrand and William Eggleston, influential in Szarkowski’s career. Also, Ruth Bernhard, Susan Meiselas, Stephen Shore, Josef Sudek and Wright Morris will be included, among many others.

In addition to MoPA's permanent collection, the museum will include several of Szarkowski's own photographs for the exhibition. Prior to becoming curator of MoMA, Szarkowski was also a photographer, illustrated by his book on the architecture of Louis Sullivan. After retiring in 1991, he returned to the medium, almost exclusively photographing his upstate New York farm. MoPA's newest exhibition inserts him into his own thesis as the ultimate culmination of his photographic legacy.

FILM SCREENING & GALLERY TOUR

John Szarkowski: A Life in Photography (1998, 47 min.)
MoPA's Joan & Irwin Jacobs Theater

FOLLOWED by a Gallery Tour
The Photographer's Eye: A Way of Seeing
Led by MoPA Curator Carol McCusker

Thursday, January 31, 2008 at 6:30 p.m.
Sunday, February 17, 2008 at 3 p.m.
Thursday, March 20, 2008 at 6:30 p.m.

Call for reservations, space is limited
619.238.7559 x227