New Documents

New Documents exhibition. Conceived by John Szarkowski at the Museum of Modern Art in 1967, it featured the work of Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, and Garry Winogrand. Szarkowski said of the photographers: ‘Their aim has been not to reform life but to know it, not to persuade, but to understand.’ The artists' overall objective of candidly documenting people going about their everyday lives, however, may have been overwhelmed at the time by viewers' perception of the images—particularly those of Arbus—as essentially bizarre.

— Tim Troy