Press Preview (1978). Mirrors and Windows: American Photography since 1960, July 28-October 2, 1978. At: https://www.moma.org/momaorg/shared/pdfs/docs/press_archives/5624/releases/MOMA_1978_0060_56.pdf (accessed 16/09/2017).
This article is a press release prior to the open of a photography exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York curated by John Szarkowski.
The exhibition was designed to show the significant changes in photography in the United States and gave a new theoretical framework for contemporary photography. For Szarkowski the exhibition showed the shift away from the ‘public to private concerns’. Photography began to demonstrate personal concerns rather than being a medium for social or aesthetic progress.
His idea of mirrors was that that this was a:
‘romantic expression of the photographer’s sensibility as it projects itself on the things and sights of this world; or as a window – through which the exterior world is explored in all its presence and reality’. (p.2)
He believed that this change in focus began in the 1950’s following a number of social, economic and technological changes in society. He doesn’t see the windows and mirrors dichotomy as a hard and fast rule however but more a spectrum of photography. In terms of the exhibition he said what united the photographers was their ‘pursuit of beauty: that formal integrity that pays homage to the dream of meaningful life.’
Stockdale, D. (2008). Windows and Mirrors by John Szarkowski . At: https://thephotobook.wordpress.com/2008/10/16/windows-and-mirrors-by-john-szarkowski/ (accessed 16/09/2017)
Stockdale provides a definition of windows and mirrors which I found easier to understand:
‘Window (direct observation) or as a Mirror (introspective narrative).’
Thus a mirror approach shows a romantic view or a ‘ love for the eloquently perfect print; intense sensitivity to mystical content of the natural landscape and minimal interest of man as a social animal’.
In contrast Robert Frank is seen as an example of the window approach, i.e. a “sophisticated social intelligence, quick eyes and a radical understanding of the potentials of the small camera, which depended on good drawing rather than on elegant tonal description.”
CONTEXT AND NARRATIVE 