The slippage promoted by The Family of Man
between photojournalism, artistic expression, scien-
tific and technical data, and amateur snapshot today
appears as a perhaps unintentional articulation of
postmodernismavant la lettre.
By the 1960s, the tide had most certainly chan-
ged in photography’s favor. There now existed
multiple departments in museums devoted to the
collection and display of photographs. The wildly
successful touring tenure ofThe Family of Manhad
proven that public interest in photography was as
fervent as it was far-reaching. As Beaumont New-
hall retrospectively characterized it:
...the scheduling of major photographic exhibitions by
leading art museums in Europe and America; the grow-
ing interest in photography on the part of individuals as
well as institutions; the inclusion of courses in the photo-
graphic arts by universities and art schools are all steps
toward the ultimate unquestioned acceptance of the
potentials of the camera.
(Newhall 294)Photography, in other words, had come into
its own.
At MoMA, John Szarkowski succeeded Steichen
and moved the department quickly away from the
more encompassing social conception of photogra-
phy to one that would emphasize the medium’s
aesthetic character. Szarkowski worked to codify
photographic practice during his tenure at MoMA,
hoping to establish and define the peculiarities of
the medium. In exhibitions such asThe Photogra-
pher’s Eye (1964) and Looking at Photographs
(1973), he intended to discern a style and tradition
that was firmly grounded in the formal and techni-
cal characteristics. As he famously explained in his
introduction to the former of the two exhibition
catalogues, ‘‘This book is an investigation of what
photographs look like, and why they look that
way’’ (John Szarkowski,The Photographer’s Eye,
New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1966, p. 1).
Szarkowski’s efforts to discern and distill the
essence of photography would quickly meet with
harsh criticism as those in a younger generation,
their everyday lives steeped in photographs of all
stripes, found fault with formalism.
It was Szarkowski’s 1967 exhibitionNew Docu-
ments, however, which perhaps most indelibly
marked the history of late twentieth century photo-
graphy. Intending to identify the most recent devel-
opments of the previous decade, Szarkowski focused
on the work of Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, and
Garry Winogrand, all of whom he considered to
have inherited and created anew the documentary
photography tradition of the 1930s. In fact, Diane
Arbus’s retrospective exhibition in 1971 drew crowds
to MoMA larger than those forThe Family of Man,
suggesting a new level of public excitement about
photography.New Topographies: Photographs of a
Man-Altered Landscape at the George Eastman
House also identified an emerging trend in the
broadly-construed field of landscape photography,
notably the emphasis on the altered landscape as a
subject of contemporary photography. Works by
Robert Adams, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Joe Deal,
Nicholas Nixon, Stephen Shore, and Henry Wessel,
Jr., among others, considered the effect of the devel-
oped landscape in urban centers, tranquil suburbia,
and forsaken buildings. The exhibition mounted by
the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which had not
theretofore particularly dealt with photography,
Harlem on My Mind—often labeled the first of mod-
ern-day museum blockbusters and one of the great
controversies in museum history—secured its place
in twentieth century photo history. A thematic exhi-
bition not confined by media,Harlem on My Mind
was single-handedly responsible for the historical
recovery of James VanDerZee as one of the leading
photographic portraitists of his day.
By the outset of the 1970s, photography’s popu-
larity with art museums and publics alike was
increasingly undisputed. Between 1973 and 1990,
the number of photography collections in the Uni-
ted States more than quadrupled and the number of
photographers in those same collections sky-
rocketed from well over 1,000 to over 32,000. The
market for photography ballooned similarly; prices
for photographs between 1975 and 1990 escalated
by approximately 650 percent (Alexander, 698).
These figures undoubtedly reflect the activities of
those photography institutions or departments
established at the time. For example, the years
1974 to 1976 saw the founding of the International
Center of Photography in New York, the Center for
Creative Photography in Arizona, and Museum of
Contemporary Photography in Chicago collections.
The formation of the Photographs Collection at
the J. Paul Getty Museum is perhaps among the
most astounding examples of this buying curve. In
1984, the art world was stunned to learn of the
Getty’s acquisition of the complete holdings of
three private collections and portions of several
others. Amounting to more than 25,000 photo-
graphs, these acquisitions demonstrated the relative
ease and affordability of amassing a collection of
significant breadth and depth. The same amount of
funds that might be directed to a single Old Master
painting could, in the early years of this market,
yield an entire department’s worth of photographs.
Photography was quickly becoming an institutionMUSEUMS: UNITED STATES