Tuesday, January 02, 2007

John Szarkowski


John Szarkowski, Matthew Brady in the Back Yard I, 1952
Copyright 1952 John Szarkowski

Interesting comment from John Szarkowski in a recent interview with Holly Myers:

"Some photographers think the idea is enough. I told a good story in my Getty talk, a beautiful story, to the point: Ducasse says to his friend Mallarmé — I think this is a true story — he says, 'You know, I’ve got a lot of good ideas for poems, but the poems are never very good.” Mallarmé says, “Of course, you don’t make poems out of ideas, you make poems out of words.' Really good, huh? Really true. So, photographers who aren’t so good think that you make photographs out of ideas. And they generally get only about halfway to the photograph and think that they’re done."

Kind of like naming your dog Matthew Brady, if you didn't actually have a dog. (Avoidance of which might make a pretty good New Year's resolution, generally speaking, whether you have a dog or not.)