Further Reading
Coleman, A.D.Light Readings: A Photography Critic’s
Writings 1968–1978. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1979.
Eisinger, Joel.Trace and Transformation: American Criti-
cism of Photography in the Modernist Period. Albuquer-
que: University of New Mexico Press, 1995.
Green, Jonathan.American Photography: A Critical History
1945 to the Present. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1984.
Nickel, Doug. ‘‘John Szarkowski: An Interview.’’History of
Photography19, no. 2 (Summer 1995).
Phillips, Christopher. ‘‘The Judgment Seat of Photogra-
phy.’’ In Richard Bolton, ed.The Contest of Meaning:
Critical Histories of Photography. Cambridge and Lon-
don: The MIT Press, 1989.
Solomon-Godeau, Abigail. ‘‘Photography After Art Pho-
tography.’’ In Brian Wallis, ed.Art after Modernism:
Rethinking Representation. Boston: Godine, 1984.
Stange, Maren. ‘‘Photography and the Institution: Szar-
kowski at the Modern.’’Massachusetts Review19 (Win-
ter 1978).
Szarkowski, John. ‘‘Photography and the Mass Media.’’
Aperture13, no. 3 (1967).GABOR SZILASI
Canadian
Since arriving in Canada in 1957, Gabor Szilasi has
established himself as one of the most important
Canadian documentary photographers, especially
in Quebec, his province of residence. His work is
highly respected by the artistic community for its
technically impeccable rendition of culturally sig-
nificant architecture, both vernacular and institu-
tional, and his moving portraits of the ordinary
people who inhabit the spaces he photographs.
His black-and-white or color images, often pro-
duced with large-format cameras, have a sense of
timelessness and peace, free of the tension of city
life. He taught for over 25 years, making a valuable
contribution to the development and sustenance of
Canadian documentary photography, especially in
Atlantic and Central Canada. His social interests
and human approach have found favor with
French-Canadian photographers in Quebec, who
are committed to the preservation of French-Cana-
dian culture and have a strong interest in socio-
political issues.
Born in Budapest, Hungary, on 3 February 1928,
Gabor Janos Szilasi attended the Evange ́likus Gim-
nazium, and from 1946–1949 studied medicine at
the University of Budapest. He lost his mother and
siblings during World War II. His father was a
forestry engineer and later the owner of a small
factory producing wood chips. In October 1949,
Szilasi tried to flee the country through Czechoslo-
vakia to escape the communist regime, but was
caught and spent five months in prison, bringing
an end to his medical studies. In 1950, he was a
laborer on the Budapest subway, and from 1952 to
1956 he worked in his father’s factory. Around that
time, Szilasi began to visit the French Alliance in
Budapest, where he was introduced to Russian and
American magazines and discovered the work of
Henri Cartier-Bresson, Richard Avedon, and Izis,
a Lithuanian photographer living in France.
In 1952, he purchased his first camera, a Zorkij,
a Russian copy of the Leica 111F which he had
heard of through friends and magazine articles.
From 15 to 25 November, he documented the Hun-
garian uprising in Budapest, and on 30 November
he successfully fled the country to Vienna, where a
few weeks later his father joined him. They applied
for emigration visas to Sweden and Canada and
were accepted first by Canada. Although Szilasi
was deeply and personally affected by the major
political changes that were shaping the world at
that time, his photographic interests in this period
had less to do with politics than with life in general:
images of friends and of the city landscape, hiking
trips in Czechoslovakia. At the same time, he
developed a strong interest in the Italian and
French neo-realist cinema—especially the films
of Luchino Visconti, Vittorio De Sica, and the
early movies of Frederico Fellini. He was also very
interested in music and in the work of realist writers
such as Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Leo Tolstoy. His
interestsofthetimehadlesstodowithpoliticsor
theory than with—as the American photographer
Garry Winogrand once put it—‘‘what the world
looks like on a piece of 8 by 10 inch paper.’’SZARKOWSKI, JOHN