John Szarkowski

Thaddeus John Szarkowski (December 18, 1925-July 7, 2007) was an American photographer, curator, historian, and critic. From 1962 to 1991 Szarkowski was the director of photography at New York's Museum of Modern Art.

When Philip C. Elliott (1903-1985) was director of the Albright Art School, he brought John Szarkowski to Buffalo to teach. Many years later, as director of the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, John Szarkowski acquired a selection of Philip Elliott’s photographs for MoMA which he described as “remarkably fresh, unmannered, clearly seen notations of a keen eye and superior mind.”  Szarkowski's photographs exhibit the same aesthetic.

Photo: John Szarkowski, New York, 1963 © Estate of André Kertész