House, Monticello, Minnesota

Tremendously influential at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, where he was director of photography between 1962 and 1991, John Szarkowski also had an active career as a photographer, producing a book on the architecture of Louis Sullivan and a publication for the 1958 Minnesota centennial titled The Face of Minnesota. This image of a humble porch was included in the latter work, alongside photographs of residents, industry, vernacular architecture, and rolling landscapes to form a portrait of the state at 100. He wrote that he had “tried to show the land and its people and their work . . . to give a lively and an honest sense of what the place is really like.” Szarkowski’s unvarnished depiction of a home that is aging, yet preserved with dignity, hints at the character of its inhabitants.