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Peter Bunnell (1937-2021): A Farewell

“I was snookered into photography to begin with — captured by certain aspects of the medium — and it’s simply been a matter of deciding what I could do within that context. The whole reason I’m in this curatorship is Beaumont [Newhall].” […]

John Szarkowski: “Photography Until Now” at MoMA (1990)

What we’re offered instead is merely a set of pictures John Szarkowski likes — a comparative bagatelle … Such a misuse of power, prestige and influence is an effective if lamentable indication of why the Modern’s credibility and influence on the medium have waned so dramatically during the last decade of his tenure. […]

Jill Freedman (1939-2019): A Farewell

Does it strike anyone else but me as strange that historians will go scrabbling around in the leavings of defunct, reticent, privileged amateurs like Alice Austen and Marjorie Content rather than grapple with the significant, published output of a living, breathing photographer who has functioned independently from the beginning and, without family wealth or husband to rely on, found ways of supporting herself and her work outside the academy and the grants system? […]

APAG Seminar 2017

The first thing I want from you, as the person in charge of materials that you hope to place in an archive or as the person managing an archive, is to to do no harm — to think long and hard before you throw anything away. And, preferably, to consult with people who understand and work with archives before you discard anything. Because you can’t possibly know, or anticipate, what I will find important when I get there. […]

Clarence John Laughlin: In Memoriam (2)

I know dozens of photographers over fifty years old who never got their due and are beginning to realize that they may never get it. After three or four or five decades of work, they begin to wonder if, in the current public feasting on photography, there are any scraps for them. […]