Originally published in 1973, this marvelous collection of photographs with accompanying texts by the revered late Museum of Modern Art photography curator John Szarkowski has long been recognized as a classic. Reissued in 1999-with new digital duotones-this volume is now available to a new generation of readers. This is a picture book, and its first purpose is to provide the material for simple delectation, says Szarkowski in his introduction to this first survey of The Museum of Modern Art's photography collection. A visually splendid album, the book is both a treasury of remarkable photographs and a lively introduction to the aesthetics and the historical development of photography. Since 1930, when the Museum accessioned its first photograph, it has assembled an extraordinary and wide-ranging collection of pictures for preservation, study and exhibition. Among the outstanding figures represented here are Hill and Adamson, Cameron, O'Sullivan, Atget, Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand, Weston, Kertesz, Evans, Cartier-Bresson, Lange, Brassai, Ansel Adams, Shomei Tomatsu, Frank, Arbus and Friedlander. Some of these photographs are classics, familiar and well-loved favorites, many are surprising, little-known works by the masters of the art.

In 1962 John Szarkowski accepted the position of Director of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Before that time he had received two Guggenheim Fellowships for his own photography, had been given exhibitions by The Walker Art Center, The George Eastman House and the Art Institute of Chicago and had published two books of his photographs to critical and popular acclaim. From 1962 until retiring from the Museum in 1991, he made no effort to exhibit or publish his work. Now his work from his first twenty years as a photographer and that since resuming his life as a photographer is presented in this splendidly printed volume. Published in conjunction with a major touring retrospective exhibition, the book is confirmation that Szarkowski is first and foremost a photographer. Accompanying the photographs are excerpts from a lifetime's correspondence — often witty, always revealing — giving a glimpse of Szarkowski's perspective on life and photography.

«The Photographer's Eye by John Szarkowski is a twentieth-century classic--an indispensable introduction to the visual language of photography. Based on a landmark exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in 1964, and originally published in 1966, the book has long been out of print. It is now available again to a new generation of photographers and lovers of photography in this duotone printing that closely follows the original. Szarkowski's compact text eloquently complements skillfully selected and sequenced groupings of 172 photographs drawn from the entire history and range of the medium. Celebrated works by such masters as Cartier-Bresson, Evans, Steichen, Strand, and Weston are juxtaposed with vernacular documents and even amateur snapshots to analyze the fundamental challenges and opportunities that all photographers have faced. Szarkowski, the legendary curator who worked at the Museum from 1962 to 1991, has published many influential books. But none more radically and succinctly demonstrates why--as U.S. News & World Report put it in 1990--»whether Americans know it or not, «his thinking about photography» has become our thinking about photography».»

«Ansel Adams at 100» is the most significant book yet on the great photographers work, edited and with text by legendary curator John Szarkowski. John Szarkowski has painstakingly selected what he considers Adams greatest work — 114 images — and has attempted to find the single best photographic print of each. He notes, It includes many photographs that will be unfamiliar to lovers of Adams work, and a substantial number that will be new to Adams scholars. This book, with Szarkowskis incisive essay, is the first serious effort since Adams death in 1984 to re-evaluate his achievement as an artist.»