The Face of Minnesota

by John Szarkowski, Verlyn Klinkenborg (Foreword), Richard Benson (Afterword)

“Ducks in a stream, the bridge at St. Anthony Falls, streets of cities and towns, a fish in a net, the glittering lakes seen under low skies. The Face of Minnesota is a fresh, simple, unpretentious statement of a place and time by people who know what Minnesota is because they live there.” —Minor White, Aperture, 1958 “John Szarkowski is the single most important curator that photography has ever had. Looking at his photographs created over the last fifty years makes me want to weep. They are truly American pictures; one feels his desire to show not just what America was but what it still can be.” —Ingrid Sischy, Vanity Fair, 2005 Originally commissioned to commemorate Minnesota’s centennial in 1958 and out of print for nearly forty years, The Face of Minnesota is a lost masterpiece of photography and an eloquent tribute to the people and places of the North Star state. Republished in celebration of the state’s sesquicentennial, this beautifully produced edition includes contemporary essays about John Szarkowski’s impact on American photography and introduces his work to new generations of Minnesotans. Featuring more than 175 arresting photographs as well as essays filled with wit and affection, The Face of Minnesota opens with this “This book is about Minnesota now. But as a mature man carries on his face and in his bearing the history of his past, so does the look of a place today show its past-what it has been and what it has believed in.” Though Minnesota has changed dramatically during the past fifty years, The Face of Minnesota reveals the simple beauty of the imprint of the past and its deep resonance today. John Szarkowski (1925–2007) was director of the photography program at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where he transformed our understanding of the art of photography through influential exhibitions and books, including Looking at Photographs (1973). In 2005 his work was surveyed in a traveling exhibition, accompanied by the book John Photographs. Verlyn Klinkenborg joined the editorial board of the New York Times in 1997. He is the author of several works, including The Rural Life. Richard Benson has worked as a photographer and printer since 1966. He teaches at Yale University and is the coauthor, with John Szarkowski, of A Maritime 100 Photographs and Their Stories.

320 pages, Hardcover

First published April 4, 2008

About the author

John Szarkowski was an American photographer and curator best known for his role as the director of the Museum of Modern Art’s Photography Department from 1962 through 1991. “Photography is the easiest thing in the world if one is willing to accept pictures that are flaccid, limp, bland, banal, indiscriminately informative, and pointless,” he once explained. “But if one insists in a photograph that is both complex and vigorous it is almost impossible.”

Born Thaddeus John Szarkowski on December 18, 1925 in Ashland, WI, he went on receive a degree in art history from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1948. After working as a museum photographer at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, he moved to Buffalo to teach photography. The artist then relocated to Chicago, where he worked on his photobook The Idea of Louis Sullivan (1956). After his appointment at MoMA in 1962, Szkarowski would help launch the careers of Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, and William Eggleston, among several others during his tenure. He also published acclaimed books on the history of photography, including The Photographer’s Eye (1966) and Looking at Photographs: 100 Pictures from the Collection of The Museum of Modern Art (1973).

After retiring from the museum in 1991, Szarkowski resumed his own career in photography. He died on July 7, 2007 in Pittsfield, MA. Today, the artist’s works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, among others.