For this exercise I have to select ten images from my archive and separate them into two sets, one that can be thought of as windows, the other as mirrors. These are the definitions used by John Szarkowski in the title of the 1978 exhibition he curated at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MoMA) in New York. The full title of the exhibition was ‘Mirrors and Windows: American Photography since 1960’ (Marien, 2014).

The press release from 1978 states

MIRRORS AND WINDOWS has been organised around Szarkowski’s thesis that such personal vision take one of two forms. In metaphorical terms, the photogrpaher is seen either as a mirror – 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.

MoMA presss release – June 1978

Although this premise of the exhibition would seem to be about what images say about the photographer, in reality the thinking behind it was more nuanced. Szakowski’s premise was that the 1950s saw a major shift in approach, moving away from public concerns as exemplified by the photographs produced for the Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression, this combined with the decline in picture magazines such as Life and Look reduced the opportunities available for professional photographers. These changes lead to photographers to create work that Szarkowksi labelled mirrors, as typified by Minor White. During the same period Robert Frank produced The Americans, a work idenitfied by Szarowski as typifing windows. Szarkowski also acknowledged that his aim was not to classify works into two discrete, unrelated bodies and that no work could be thought of as purely one type or the other.

Mirrors

What these images say about me: reserved, European, photographer interested in colour and form.

Windows

The photographs above were all taken whilst on holiday in France and I had deliberately set myself the objective of trying to take a series of images that would convey something about the country and the people who live there.

I did not have any difiiculty in classifying the images, especially the photographs I took when in France; what was more challenging was to find photographs that I felt fulfilled the mirror part of the exercise.

Sources

Moma.org. (1978). Mirrors and Windows; American photography since 1960. [online] Available at: https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_press-release_327154.pdf [Accessed 21 Feb. 2020].

Warner Marien, M. (2014). Photography. 4th ed. London: Laurence King, pp.385-9.