Eyes Wide Open: Interview with John Szarkowski -> Art in America →

“In a few cases photographers’ writings on their own work became highly influential. Among younger working photographers, Cartier-Bresson’s introductory essay in The Decisive Moment (1952) had constituted something close to an article of faith, until the authority of that text was undermined to some degree by Robert Frank’s Statement of 1958, which made it clear that working for magazines was not an option for photographers who had achieved adulthood. Edward Weston had stopped writing his Daybooks a generation earlier, but the first volume in book form was not published until 1961, and it became a very popular inspirational text, not only for its frequently penetrating thought on the art of photography, but for its suggestion that creative photography and sexual adventure were almost inevitable bedfellows.” (…)