• Diffuse and more about imagery than photography.
• Photography is the mix of subjective expression and aesthetic effect.
• While documentary photography displays a generalized sympathy for the poor, at the same time, it does not enable the people to communicate or present themselves or their problematic. In this sense, it tends to commodificate the portrayed reality and reduce it to consumable art.
• Szarkowski denied photography was a narrative form and repeatedly pointed to its lack of immediate readability. He saw photography as an art of details and fragments, and not one of storytelling.