Kai’s Photo Topic: The Photographer John Szarkowski

Kai’s Photo Topic: A weekly (?) hosted discussion on a photography-related subject. This video is a recording from May9th, 2020. An appreciative look at the work made by the eminent curator before and after his time at MoMA. Most of us first saw and tried to decipher that tongue twister of a last name when coming across his writings in one of the MoMA catalogs (for me it was reading his descriptions of Atget’s photographs). But who was the photographer, already a two-time Guggenheim Fellow, that landed that job at MoMA in 1962? With the large gap between bodies of work, what does it mean to give your creative energy over to something larger than yourself, and how might that be something those of us who teach need to keep at heart? Recordings of past Photo Topics can be found on this YouTube channel. For notes and other items related to past topics please visit To learn of future discussions, follow Kai McBride on Instagram: Kai McBride’s website: