My inspiration ... John Szarkowski by Eamonn McCabe
Nearly every decent book I have on photography has a foreword written by John Szarkowsi, who until his retirement was the director of photography at the influential Museum Of Modern Art in New York. Even his fiercest critics acknowledged that it was unusual to have somebody who actually knew what he was talking about at the head of its photography department.
I met him a few years ago when he came over from America to present a lecture at the Victoria and Albert museum in London and took the above photograph of him. I brought him a copy of my book, which features my own sports work taken over the years and some urban landscapes that I was very interested in at the time. I was hoping he would be so wowed by the quality of the work that he would ask for some of my pictures to take back with him to New York to hang in his gallery. Sadly he didn't!
His first pictures were of robins in his garden captured on his father's camera. He came a long way from those early scratchings to taking over from the legendary Edward Steichen at Moma. Some would say that was a tough act to follow, but Szarkowski said it was a lot easier to follow the great man rather than somebody who didn't do anything with their talent.
Szarkowski never collected prints himself. I suppose when you had the finest collection available at your place of work every day it's not a surprise. He did have one or two prints by Diane Arbus, a Dorothea Lange and the odd Walker Evans but as he said, "In the old days it was the only way you could get rid of a print, you gave them one of yours, but then you had to take one of theirs, so the trunk never got any emptier."
I will remember him for making photography accepted as art - even in New York, which is quite an achievement, and something we're still lagging behind in over here. That is his legacy.
