[3] He was born and grew up in the small northern Wisconsin city of Ashland, and became interested in photography at age eleven.

[3] The book is still required reading for students of photography, and argues for the importance of looking carefully and bringing to bear every bit of intelligence and understanding possessed by the viewer.

Szarkowski has also published numerous books on individual photographers, including, with Maria Morris Hamburg, the definitive four-volume work on the photography of Atget.

His 'Mirror' analogy represents self-reflective photography, represented in the book by Jerry Uelsmann, Paul Caponigro, Ralph Gibson, Duane Michals, Judy Dater and others; while the idea of the 'Window' is found in the documentary approach, exemplified by inclusions of work by Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, Henry Wessel, Joel Meyerowitz, and Garry Winogrand.

He was succeeded by Peter Galassi, the Joel and Anne Ehrenkranz chief curator of the department of photography at The Museum of Modern Art.

[8][9] Szarkowski continued to write and curate exhibitions at MoMA and elsewhere, like Alfred Stieglitz at Lake George and Ansel Adams at 100.

In 2005 he co-curated his first retrospective of his own work with Sandra S. Phillips at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, subsequently exhibited at MoMA in early 2006.