15 Facts About John Szarkowski

Thaddeus John Szarkowski 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.

John Szarkowski was born and grew up in the small northern Wisconsin city of Ashland, and became interested in photography at age eleven.

John Szarkowski then began his career as a museum photographer at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.

In 1954 John Szarkowski received the first of two Guggenheim Fellowships, resulting in the book The Idea of Louis Sullivan.

In 1973 John Szarkowski began service to the National Endowment for the Arts as one of its three photography panelists.

In 1973 John Szarkowski published Looking at Photographs, a practical set of examples on how to write about photographs.

John Szarkowski has published numerous books on individual photographers, including, with Maria Morris Hamburg, the definitive four-volume work on the photography of Atget.

John Szarkowski taught at Harvard, Yale, and New York University, and continued to lecture and teach.

In 1991 John Szarkowski retired from his post at the MoMA and became the museum's photography director emeritus.

John Szarkowski was succeeded by Peter Galassi, the Joel and Anne Ehrenkranz chief curator of the department of photography at The Museum of Modern Art.

John Szarkowski continued to write and curate exhibitions at MoMA and elsewhere, like Alfred Stieglitz at Lake George and Ansel Adams at 100.

John Szarkowski returned to making his own photographic work, mostly attempting to picture a spirit of place in the American landscape.

In retirement, John Szarkowski served on the boards of several of the mutual funds sold by Dreyfus Corporation.

John Szarkowski died from complications of a stroke on July 7,2007, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, aged 81.