John Szarkowski: la ricerca formale come metodo percettivo-esplorativo

Abstract

The main criticism of John Szarkowski came from postmodernists, who, seeing him as a representative of institutional reality, had a limited view of his work. While postmodernists believe that the meaning of photography is purely discursive, Szarkowski argues that photography communicates visually. Remarkably, Victor Burgin and Szarkowski affirm the same idea: the subject of photography is the “act of looking.” However, while for Burgin this subject, although conceived almost unconsciously, is the “starting point” of photography, for Szarkowski, through formal research, it is its “destination.”