主贴：

怎么才能在时报广场过个舒服的新年前夜？想去看掉水晶球。我男朋友十年前去过。他警告我别想太好，会很惨。他说得很早就去，然后一小时一小时一小时熬，冻得要死，没事做，就是等着那个点。我70度一过就会感冒。不过我是密歇根的，我想我能挺过来。有点怕怕，可还是想做那种“总要做一次，说我做过了”的事。我主要担心的是到了那儿怎么小便。保暖没问题，热巧克力啊，酒啊什么的，可你从那么早就一直呆在那里，一个女生，嘘嘘怎么办呢？要带上什么东西？什么东西不能带？占哪个位置比较好？这么长时间里干啥呢？该穿什么才暖和？多给出些主意吧。

回帖：

[1]两条：1）时报广场有很多室内庆祝活动，卖票的，很贵，还得预定。一般都有绳挡着，出席的人可以很方便走去外面。2）你不能带任何东西，除了你的身体和穿在身上的衣服。保安缘故吧。

[2]如果你能想办法进到俯瞰广场的大楼里，那就没得说了。比如说你认识谁在楼里工作，而且那天能待到很晚，你可以和他们在一块儿。否则，要去人行道上站的话，要找有唐恩都乐或者星巴克之类的，它们会开到半夜。你得去上厕所。而且，你不能离开所站的街区，警察绝对严格。警察的栅栏到处都是，只要它们架起来了，你就不能离开你的街区了。所以，如果担心嘘嘘，就得找有咖啡店之类的街区，否则就惨了。

[3]哦，别想着带酒。你会给逮起来在牢里过一夜的。

[4]我知道酒在那里是严格禁止的（所以我不去，还有那些成千上万发疯的游客，加上那个冷）。如果想要能喝酒，厕所又方便，还能看到水晶球，大概只能去那里找家酒吧了，很多都有新年前夜派对的。不过很贵。

[5]我听说他们都带成人尿片的，就不用担心撒尿了。说实话，呆哪儿我都不想杵在一个围栏里，几个小时哪都不能去，挤在尖叫的人堆里，还缠个泡湿的尿片。

[6]说起来真是惨剧。1）冷。2）挤到死。3）必须老早就去，不能离开，大家一起走了你才能走，坐地铁也要你命。4）不能喝酒。5）不能撒尿。这是最大的事。我在时报广场有个秘密撒尿点，就是在万豪酒店的12楼。不过新年前夜你去不了。我知道有人真带个东西来撒尿，或者撒在身上，真的。6）想到你朋友呆在暖暖和和的地方，看着电视，吃着点心，上个厕所也方便，你气死。反正在纽约，我越来越宅，尤其碰到盛事盛典。乱七八糟的人挤人，个个火爆。在“总得试一次”的事里头，这事真的是个烂事。如果铁定了要去，穿暖，带上水、吃的、书，准备站上一整天，先找好可能会让你上厕所的地方（星巴克等等对这类事管得很严，尤其在曼哈顿中城，尤其在节日），挺住，把小瓶酒藏在裤裆或者哪里带着，然后享受那最后的10秒钟。祝好运。

[7]是的，人家都穿尿片什么的。在裤子里撒，别在裤子上撒。

[8]恐怖，寒冷，挤碎。我自己去过一次时报广场的感恩节游行就受不了了。不过还是让我十几岁的女儿去新年前夜了，拗不过她缠哪缠哪。我想保安挺严的，他们也有一大帮朋友，也有手机。过了零点我开车去接她，她说这辈子没这么惨过。她那帮朋友谁也不说话。那是恨透了。冻得要死，还没法离开，憋着要小便。怪不得你男朋友不想去。中央公园新年前夜有焰火，我想应该那要舒服得多。

[9]我10年前去过。可怕。你男朋友绝对正确。我看到男人就在站的地方小便，也见过几个女人蹲在那里小便。我唯一觉得值得的，是我可以用亲身经历叫别人别去了。控制人群的过程是这样的：掉大苹果水晶球是在42街，面向上城（向北），所以42街向上城的第一个街区最先挤满。人站在马路上，人行道是留给警察和疏散用的。第一个街区满了之后，警察就用路障把它四面围起来。然后依次一个接一个向后（向北，也就是上城方向），满一个围一个。如果你想离开，就得翻过路障去到人行道，然后沿上城方向离开。不管是腻了要回家，还是想去撒尿，你都别想再回到原地了。根据我的经验，你没法从路障的围栏里去到人行道，到咖啡店上完厕所，然后再回原地。你也没法进到后面的街区里，一旦它已经给警察的路障围起来的话。我记得我到得挺早，天还亮着呢。一开始还有的是地儿让我坐下，来回晃几步。然后到了晚上，那个推啊挤啊，我就几次脚离开过地面。吓人。我不喝酒，所以也不用想那个。好几个的喝酒给警察赶出去了（倒没见罚款和逮捕什么的）。

[10]我朋友运气好，他去时报广场为新年前夜干活，穿着防暴装，可以上厕所。他说要不是上班，他才不会去。

[11]我十年前去的，也许信息有点过时，不过挺开心的。我们穿得很暖和，好多层。气温20多度吧。晚上8点到广场（现在起码得中午去了吧），在47街找了个位置，就在斯巴鲁披萨店边上，然后就等着。要上厕所就去斯巴鲁，不过他们只让顾客用，而且很严格，我们得买一瓶又小又贵的香槟，边喝边排一个小时的队上厕所。听着可怕，其实只要算准时间，提前一个小时排队，也挺好。大家都是一个目标，还能体会到团结和谐。有几个自愿担当起“厕监”的角色，男人30秒，女人1分钟，时间一过他们就拼命砸门。队伍移动得很流畅。要回到围栏里，警察会要你证明是属于哪一帮人的，他得确认他们真的认识你才让你进。一定要弄清楚现在还能不能这样。

[12]我是2000年新年去的，和一个朋友。我们俩都没到过纽约，也没人问，两个中西部小子就没头没脑地去了。上午10点多到的，牛仔裤，皮外套，围巾，手套，帽子。没想到队伍已经开始排上了。我们也没料想人会涨得那么快，就在附近找了个地方吃饭。在餐馆里上了厕所，12点前又回去排队。可这时我们得走好几个街区去找队尾，最后是在大概12个街区才排进了围栏。开始我们还担心没水、没带吃的。后来发现还幸亏没带。这一站就是13个钟头。那个挤啊。四面都往你身上挤。保暖压根不是个问题。身体的热量要散掉，路径长着呢。帽子算是有点用，不过外套拉链我没拉起来过。有时候我们俩都没法呆在一起。以前从没体会过什么叫“人海”。我们俩就像大浪上的泡沫。人潮向我们涌来，我们刚说上两句话，又给人潮涌开。过了几个小时，我们向前移动了一个街区。可能是有人离开了围栏去找厕所，或者放弃走人了。一个围栏有点空了，警察就会放人，大家就往前冲。唯一的娱乐就是每小时的新年钟声，看哪个国家在我们之前进了2000年，这是唯一的乐子。没有多功能手机，我们也没想到带本书。就站，站。脚疼，很疼。站比走要累。在硬地上站十几个小时真不是玩的。打一开始我们就认定不能去厕所，否则就得到队尾重新排，警察说了队尾已经到中央公园了。幸亏我们已经吃过一顿了，而且没喝什么东西，能熬得住。边上有几位就不行了。没下雨，地下是湿的，各种饮料洒的，还有尿。有人就这么撒尿了。我围巾掉了，不捡。一个个家庭都放弃了走人了，我们前进到了百代唱片那里。接近子夜了。我们高兴啊，此生没有这么高兴过。我居然能在地上坐一坐了。我们原打算呆到一点，等家乡的时区进新年，但过了12点我们就决定走了。还是不容易，花了两个小时才钻过人群乘上地铁。元旦我们还在纽约，可哪儿都没去，我脚走不了路。那天我就说了，而且以后不会改口：再也不想经历一次了，也不希望别人去。这就算是一次体验，一次忍耐力测试，一个当故事讲的事吧。所以，如果你决定去：帽子，舒服的鞋，别带喝的，不能忍14小时的话，穿尿裤。祝你好运。

[13]我去过两次，99/00年和00/01年。第一次是因为反正没事，正好在附近，第二次是因为没有接受第一次的教训。两次都在9/11之前，之后整个纽约就越来越糟，所以对我说的每件事，得再乘以100个糟糕。人太稠密，喝酒被捕的可能等于零。警察有更重要的事，脏弹，炭疽热，打算用你的内脏来宣示政治观点人肉炸弹。悄悄喝口酒根本没人注意。不过，如果喝成一个醉鬼了就得小心给扔出去，不为别的，就为能多一丁点空间呼吸。我们消磨时间就是看几个傻蛋被警察抓起来。有人爬在路灯柱上，警察不想在那么多摄像机下有人摔死，所以最多冲他们喊喊，反正他们早晚会下来。先前还有些人玩人头冲浪，不过很快就歇菜了。一开始真有几个人冲浪冲到前面去了。我想大家肯定是出于真挚的利他主义，想我没法往前了，但至少我能帮别人靠前些。但有个人头冲浪的几次把脚踢到人脸上，大家火了。一个冲浪的小家伙，大家把他传来转去，就是不让他落地，他只能不停地央求。至于到了活动结束，我建议只要膀胱不爆炸，就尽可能向北走，没准会找到一家不必预约也能进去的酒吧。希望这些对你有用。

[14]我也是9/11前的哪一年去的（反正是朱利安尼当市长），挺好啊，没像他们说的那么惨啊。挤是肯定的，不就想要这个嘛，也不是挤得你没法移动。我们是傍晚时候到的，确实得和警察封街的速度赛跑。在围栏里，时不时地找个路灯柱靠一靠，买杯唐恩都乐的咖啡或者热巧克力，和周围的人闲聊，球掉下来的时候狂拥抱。冷是冷，不过也就和平时差不多。最大的拼搏倒是赶回家的火车。那时去上州的最后一班好像是1:15，所以零点一过我们就得赶紧走。总之，去过了，但也不是值得特别去做，或者花很多钱去做的事。要想保证不忍饥挨饿，保证能上厕所，只有花钱买票去附近酒店的派对。广场要去早点去，记得没有流动厕所，多穿点。可能的话，站得离音响近点儿（在百老汇和七大道，也别近得正对着音响）。找个可以靠的东西，围栏，灯柱，哪怕离中心区远一点。在公共场所喝酒是违法的，所以别弄个大酒瓶在警察面前晃。要而言之，听其自然就会有趣。如果你太操心想事事顺意，就会觉得处处杯具。

[15]我大学同学的女朋友，她父亲是警官。11点一过，警官带着他们俩、我，还有我当时的女朋友，穿过一个个围栏挤到了最前面。我们和市长合了影，转了一会儿，球就掉下来了，然后又给飞快地护送出广场，赶在别人前头坐上了地铁。如果不是这样，我才不会去，原因上面的帖子都说了。掉水晶球本身实在没啥意思。

[16]我当时有时报广场办公楼新年前夜出入证，那也不是万能的。我们也得去得越早越好（我是下午四点前），越晚警察就会越不耐烦。我们带着通行证，带着公司信笺，如果这些还不管用，就得打手机把大楼保安叫下来领，这常常得花上一二十分钟。如果想尝尝街上的味道，能坚持站10个小时的话，那么，别吃，别喝，别拉，别撒；穿暖，再暖；多带一双袜子，可以双层手套、双层袜子。最晚中午要到达。如果已经要排在50街了，走人，何必呢！如果靠近一个舞台，那会乐趣多多。晚上11点左右有礼品派送，帽子，围巾，气球，都是那些大公司赞助的。零点过后，广场就像冲过的马桶（比喻很恰当吧？）人眨眼就散了。公交很充足。如果你只想看那个水晶球，现在它就在广场挂着呢。

[17]楼上都说得差不多了，就一件事没提：鞋，不但要舒服，还得防水，一般的旅游鞋不行。我很傻，穿了双阿迪达斯，脚那个冻啊，还湿，小脚趾没知觉我都有点怕了。我是连着几个钟头站在一摊半结冰的水里（但愿是水），脚除了累，冻更厉害。如果你看了上面所有的帖子，至少心里有个准备了。

[18]补充一个，那天夜里的出租，不按表算的，是按一个固定价算的。如果你住的很远，可能还合算，要就在曼哈顿，那价格就是黑社会了。

‘亲密距离’在布鲁克林开幕

Tim Connor

九位散居美国的中国摄影师的展览，“亲密距离”，11月8日周四晚7点到9点，在布鲁克林Q Art Space开幕。更多信息点击这里。

九位摄影师之一的郑耀华（在Flickr上他叫zeyez），我一直看他的作品。他拍摄无表情风格的、貌似乏味的照片，街道、路口、大楼、餐馆、住宅，小公园，都是昆士区的那些普通地方。第一眼看上去，这些照片似乎是毫无戏剧性的随手拍。不过，继续看，你会看到它们是精心构成，细致安排的。虽然照片只是照片本身，但它们光线的苍淡，事件的极度缺乏，又使它们充满了不那么容易言说的意味。它们想要说什么？

郑耀华这次展出的作品（选自“在他们的地点”系列）给了我们一些提示。他写道，这个系列的灵感来自乔尔·斯滕菲尔德相似标题的影集“在这个地点”，这本影集重访了可怕罪案的发生地（比如，在其下发现了简妮佛·莱文尸体的山楂子树）。斯滕菲尔德的书质询了摄影表现的可疑特性以及集体记忆的含混意义。而郑耀华对斯滕菲尔德不仅是遵从。看看本页这张照片相随的文字是怎么写的。

“托尼·布兰登1967年7月7日在和同班同学乔治·坦内特（后来的中央情报局局长）打闹时擦破了膝盖。他们打架的地方离过去属于特内家的那个餐馆不远（‘丝谷碧’，以前叫‘20世纪’）。布兰登还记得当时有多疼，也记得乔治怎么为弄坏的新短裤担心，那是他的生日礼物，那天是他生日。”

郑耀华在注释里写道：“乔治·坦内特从1995年6月到2004年7月担任中央情报局代局长、局长。他的生日是1953年1月5日。托尼·布兰登那个带三个7的日子，很可能是关于其他事情的记忆。”

这是个不寻常的、莫名其妙又有点古怪吸引力的故事。和斯滕菲尔德不同，郑耀华首先关注的不是公共的，而是私人的记忆。托尼·布兰登是谁？郑耀华为什么关心他和他的故事？这个故事——尽管有细心的求证注释，可到底——是不是真的？那些细节怪得不像生造。其中的小坦内特，长大后2003年鼓励布什说伊拉克战争会是一记大灌篮的好斗献媚小人，把故事推进了公共领域。这也把一般的好奇心拎高了一个层次。我们看坦内特打架，听坦内特唧唧歪歪他弄坏的新服装。这倒是个新的视角。这很像是真实的记忆。

但如果这一切是虚构的呢？我不在乎。从前的事情是真是假？它们是否保存在能正确存取的地方？“小颈路和北方大道口”，既在此刻的照片里，也在过去的事件里。无论真假，托尼·布兰登和乔治·坦内特在新的故事里被抚育成长。时变事变。复杂。

也许这就是郑耀华要说的，通过他“平凡”的照片。

锯得狗啃，锉刀修修，砂纸一打，白嫩嫩的，装上Calumet还挺合适。

很细密的5×6″薄三合板，九毛九。Three-ply。
砂纸，几毛几分忘了。Sandpaper。
弓锯，三块九毛九。Coping saw。
锉刀，三块九毛九。File。
法兰工具，用大剪刀正好（反正旧快门）。Flange，Spanner wrench。
镜头板里面还没涂黑。正面我会叫郑好儿画些像纹身之类的东西。

终于看到木机装上镜头的样子了。

John Szarkowski, Curator of Photography, Dies at 81

By PHILIP GEFTER
Published: July 9, 2007

John Szarkowski, a curator who almost single-handedly elevated photography’s status in the last half-century to that of a fine art, making his case in seminal writings and landmark exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, died in on Saturday in Pittsfield, Mass. He was 81.

The cause of death was complications of a stroke, said Peter MacGill of Pace/MacGill Gallery and a spokesman for the family.

In the early 1960’s, when Mr. Szarkowski (pronounced Shar-COW-ski) [夏考斯基]began his curatorial career, photography was commonly perceived as a utilitarian medium, a means to document the world. Perhaps more than anyone, Mr. Szarkowski changed that perception. For him, the photograph was a form of expression as potent and meaningful as any work of art, and as director of photography at the Modern for almost three decades, beginning in 1962, he was perhaps its most impassioned advocate. Two of his books, “The Photographer’s Eye,” (1964) and “Looking at Photographs: 100 Pictures From the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art” (1973), remain syllabus staples in art history programs.

Mr. Szarkowski was first to confer importance on the work of Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander and Garry Winogrand in his influential exhibition “New Documents” at the Museum of Modern Art in 1967. That show, considered radical at the time, identified a new direction in photography: pictures that seemed to have a casual, snapshot-like look and subject matter so apparently ordinary that it was hard to categorize.

In the wall text for the show, Mr. Szarkowski suggested that until then the aim of documentary photography had been to show what was wrong with the world, as a way to generate interest in rectifying it. But this show signaled a change.

“In the past decade a new generation of photographers has directed the documentary approach toward more personal ends,” he wrote. “Their aim has been not to reform life, but to know it.”

Critics were skeptical. “The observations of the photographers are noted as oddities in personality, situation, incident, movement, and the vagaries of chance,” Jacob Deschin wrote in a review of the show in The New York Times. Today, the work of Ms. Arbus, Mr. Friedlander and Mr. Winogrand is considered among the most decisive for the generations of photographers that followed them.

As a curator, Mr. Szarkowski loomed large, with a stentorian voice and a raconteurial style. But he was self-effacing about his role in mounting the “New Documents” show.

“I think anybody who had been moderately competent, reasonably alert to the vitality of what was actually going on in the medium would have done the same thing I did,” he said several years ago. “I mean, the idea that Winogrand or Friedlander or Diane were somehow inventions of mine, I would regard, you know, as denigrating to them.”

Another exhibition Mr. Szarkowski organized at the Modern, in 1976, introduced the work of William Eggleston, whose saturated color photographs of cars, signs and individuals ran counter to the black-and-white orthodoxy of fine-art photography at the time. The show, “William Eggleston’s Guide,” was widely considered the worst of the year in photography.

“Mr. Szarkowski throws all caution to the winds and speaks of Mr. Eggleston’s pictures as ‘perfect,’ ” Hilton Kramer wrote in The Times. “Perfect? Perfectly banal, perhaps. Perfectly boring, certainly.” Mr. Eggleston would come to be considered a pioneer of color photography.

By championing the work of these artists early on, Mr. Szarkowski was helping to change the course of photography. Perhaps his most eloquent explanation of what photographers do appears in his introduction to the four-volume set “The Work of Atget,” published in conjunction with a series of exhibitions at MoMA from 1981 to 1985.

“One might compare the art of photography to the act of pointing,” Mr. Szarkowski wrote. “It must be true that some of us point to more interesting facts, events, circumstances, and configurations than others.”

He added, “The talented practitioner of the new discipline would perform with a special grace, sense of timing, narrative sweep, and wit, thus endowing the act not merely with intelligence, but with that quality of formal rigor that identifies a work of art, so that we would be uncertain, when remembering the adventure of the tour, how much our pleasure and sense of enlargement had come from the things pointed to and how much from a pattern created by the pointer.”

Thaddeus John Szarkowski was born on Dec. 18, 1925, in Ashland, Wis., where his father later became assistant postmaster. Picking up a camera at age 11, he made photography one of his principal pursuits, along with trout fishing and the clarinet, throughout high school.

He attended the University of Wisconsin, interrupted his studies to serve in the Army during World War II, then returned to earn a bachelor’s degree in 1947, with a major in art history. In college, he played second-chair clarinet for the Madison Symphony Orchestra, but maintained that he held the post only because of the wartime absence of better musicians.

As a young artist in the early 1950s, Mr. Szarkowski began to photograph the buildings of the renowned Chicago architect Louis Sullivan. In an interview in 2005 in The New York Times, he said that when he was starting out, “most young artists, most photographers surely, if they were serious, still believed it was better to work in the context of some kind of potentially social good.”

The consequence of this belief is evident in the earnestness of his early pictures, which come out of an American classical tradition. His early influences were Walker Evans and Edward Weston. “Walker for the intelligence and Weston for the pleasure,” he said. In 1948, Evans and Weston were not yet as widely known as Mr. Szarkowski would eventually make them through exhibitions at MoMA.

By the time Mr. Szarkowski arrived at the museum from Wisconsin in 1962 at the age of 37, he was already an accomplished photographer. He had published two books of his own photographs, “The Idea of Louis Sullivan” (1956) and “The Face of Minnesota” (1958). Remarkably for a volume of photography, the Minnesota book landed on The New York Times best-seller list for several weeks, perhaps because Dave Garroway had discussed its publication on the “Today” program.

When Mr. Szarkowski was offered the position of director of the photography department at the Modern, he had just received a Guggenheim Fellowship to work on a new project. In a letter to Edward Steichen, then curator of the department, he accepted the job, registering with his signature dry wit a reluctance to leave his lakeside home in Wisconsin: “Last week I finally got back home for a few days, where I could think about the future and look at Lake Superior at the same time. No matter how hard I looked, the Lake gave no indication of concern at the possibility of my departing from its shores, and I finally decided that if it can get along without me, I can get along without it.”

A year after arriving in New York, he married Jill Anson, an architect, who died on Dec. 31. Mr. Szarkowski is survived by two daughters, Natasha Szarkowski Brown and Nina Anson Szarkowski Jones, both of New York, and two grandchildren. A son, Alexander, died in 1972 at age 2.

Among the many other exhibitions he organized as a curator at the Modern was “Mirrors and Windows,” in 1978, in which he broke down photographic practice into two categories: documentary images and those that reflect a more interpretive experience of the world. And, in 1990, his final exhibition was an idiosyncratic overview called “Photography Until Now,” in which he traced the technological evolution of the medium and its impact on the look of photographs.

In 2005, Mr. Szarkowski was given a retrospective exhibition of his own photographs, which opened at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, touring museums around the country and ending at the Museum of Modern Art in 2006. His photographs of buildings, street scenes, backyards and nature possess the straightforward descriptive clarity he so often championed in the work of others, and, in their simplicity, a purity that borders on the poetic.

From his own early photographs, which might serve as a template for his later curatorial choices, it is easy to see why Mr. Szarkowski had such visual affinity for the work of Friedlander and Winogrand.

When asked by a reporter how it felt to exhibit his own photographs finally, knowing they would be measured against his curatorial legacy, he became circumspect. As an artist, “you look at other people’s work and figure out how it can be useful to you,” he said.

“I’m content that a lot of these pictures are going to be interesting for other photographers of talent and ambition,” he said. “And that’s all you want.”

-New York Times

John Szarkowski; curator elevated art of photography

By Mary Rourke, Los Angeles Times | July 10, 2007

LOS ANGELES — John Szarkowski, the longtime director of photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and a dominant figure in the establishment of photography as an art form, has died. He was 81.

Mr. Szarkowski, who began his career as a photographer and returned to his camera in recent years, died Saturday in Pittsfield, Mass., said Peter MacGill of the Pace/MacGill gallery in New York. Mr. Szarkowski died of complications from a stroke he suffered in March.

“His influence on post-war American photography has been so profound as to be incalculable,” critic Andy Grundberg wrote in the New York Times in 1990, the year before Mr. Szarkowski retired.

Other curators acknowledge talented photographers by giving them a museum exhibit. “Szarkowski made discoveries,” said Grundberg, administrative chairman of photography at the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, D.C., in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. “When he showed the photographs of Diane Arbus, that was a discovery.”

Mr. Szarkowski included Arbus in “New Documents,” an exhibit of 1967 that also featured Garry Winogrand and Lee Friedlander. All three photographers shared a common influence, documentary photography.

None of their names was well known at the time but all of them came to be considered among the leading talents of their generation.

“John was very interested in trying to understand photography as a whole, the concrete and the ephemeral aspects,” said Peter Galassi, chief curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art. “And he had a first-class mind.”

In the 1970s, Mr. Szarkowski’s controversial show of William Eggleston’s work was the museum’s first major exhibit of color photographs.

Eggleston’s images of landscapes, suburbs, and the people who inhabit them were “perfectly boring,” Hilton Kramer wrote in a 1976 review for The New York Times. He added that Eggleston’s style suggested snapshots, a growing trend in contemporary photography that “has all but derailed Mr. Szarkowski’s taste.”

Others saw the Eggleston exhibit as a breakthrough.

“That show announced color photography,” Grundberg said.

It challenged the established idea that only black and white photography conveyed the technical skill and aesthetic depth required of an art photograph. It was one of many times when Mr. Szarkowski “stuck his neck out,” Grundberg said.

Along with younger talents, Mr. Szarkowski championed the work of older masters including Ansel Adams and Walker Evans with major exhibitions of their work.

He also introduced audiences to European photographers, including Eugene Atget .

“John set the rules of connoisseurship,” said Stephen White, a photography dealer and former gallery owner in Los Angeles. “He made the Museum of Modern Art a paradigm for the field. He set the standard on how to display photography, how to look at it, how to frame it.”

Some people said that Mr. Szarkowski was a Formalist who liked photographs filled with straightforward information but wasn’t much interested in manipulated images, radical abstractions, or avant-garde concepts.

As young photographers such as Cindy Sherman made references in their work to painting, sculpture, movie stills and posters, “John had no affection for it,’ Grundberg said. “He totally missed that boat.”

He also resisted the homosexually explicit photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe despite what some critics saw as their historical significance.

Mr. Szarkowski’s polished writing style and his ease as a lecturer attracted an ever widening audience of people curious to learn what makes certain photographs and photographers important.

Two major books he wrote during his early years at the Museum of Modern Art established his reputation.

“The Photographer’s Eye,” of 1966 included work by known talents, professional photographers, and amateurs.

A second book, “Looking at Photographs” of 1973, highlighted 100 photographs from the Museum of Modern Art collection through history.

Thaddeus John Szarkowski was born in Ashland, Wis., on Dec. 18, 1925. His father, a postal worker, gave him a camera when he was about 11.

Mr. Szarkowski printed his own pictures in the darkroom he built in the cellar of the house.

After graduating from the University of Wisconsin in 1948, he worked as a staff photographer at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

His book of 1958, “The Face of Minneapolis,” shows views of community life, landscapes, and local people.

He left the Walker in 1950 and took a job as a photography instructor at the Albright Art School in Buffalo, N.Y., where he stayed until 1953.

He had become interested in the architecture of Louis Sullivan and was inspired by the Guaranty building, in Buffalo. His interest, aided by a Guggenheim grant, led to the book, “The Idea of Louis Sullivan,” with photographs and text that was published 1956.

Through the early 1950s, Mr. Szarkowski had several exhibitions of his photographs, many of them images of nature or of buildings.

He was working on another book when he was invited to meet with administrators at the Museum of Modern Art. He thought the invitation might lead to an exhibit of his photographs, he later told Vanity Fair.

Instead, he moved into his office at the museum during the summer of 1962.

His predecessor was Edward Steichen, whose gauzy photographs Mr. Szarkowski had admired in his student years.

In 1963, Mr. Szarkowski met and married architect Jill Anson. The couple had three two girls and a boy.

Their son died in childhood. Anson died in December.

Mr. Szarkowski’s last major show at the Museum of Modern Art was “Photography Until Now” in 1990. It covered the history of photography from the daguerreotypes of the mid-1800s to current works including “Tom Moran,” a 1988 portrait of a man dying of AIDS by Nicholas Nixon.

Mr. Szarkowski became an emeritus curator for the Museum of Modern Art in 1991, worked on several exhibits for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and kept up his writing and his lecture schedule.

Perhaps more important to Mr. Szarkowski, he returned to taking photographs.

His pictures of the apple farm he owned in rural New York state were exhibited in a retrospective of his work, “John Szarkowski: Photographs,” that opened at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2005 and traveled to other cities.

Mr. Szarkowski leaves his two daughters, Natasha Szarkowski Brown and Nina Anson Szarkowski Jones, both of New York; and two grandchildren.

Correction: The obituary yesterday of photography curator John Szarkowski, from the Los Angeles Times, misidentified the title of one of his books. The correct title is “The Face of Minnesota.”
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.

- Boston.com

我注意到它的页标题：Nothing is too amazing to be true。

于是我想：Nothing is too banal to be amazing；不知道通不通。

———-
今天还看到小报上引用克林顿的话：Everybody’s working well when everybody’s working well，也是蛮好看的句子。

【重要补充】几天后我在女儿面前结结巴巴引用克林顿的这句话，她听懂后说：No。我们上上上一个话题是关于她的一个同学在合作作业中如何不负责任。我之愚蠢可见一斑。