The New Documents exhibition opened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York on February 28, 1967. John Szarkowski, the museum's director of photography, showed 94 prints by three photographers, Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander and Garry Winogrand, and argued that documentary photography could serve personal vision. This is the sixth chapter of our series on the exhibitions that made photography history.
For years, the word "documentary" had meant reform. Photographers of the 1930s recorded poverty, and magazines spread their pictures to change public opinion. In 1967, a MoMA curator proposed a different idea. Documentary photographs, he suggested, could also describe how one person sees the world.
The previous chapter, The Family of Man, tried to speak for all humanity. By contrast, New Documents spoke for three individuals.
The New Documents Exhibition: Three Photographers at MoMA
MoMA's exhibition record lists the show as running from February 28 to May 7, 1967, under the curator John Szarkowski.1 However, the museum's scholar Sarah Hermanson Meister reports that the closing date changed several times and finally moved to May 15.2 For that reason, we cite both dates and attribute each to its source.
The numbers: 94 prints in two galleries
According to Meister, 94 photographs hung on the walls. Arbus contributed 32, Friedlander 30 and Winogrand 32. In addition, a projection of about 80 color slides by Winogrand ran alongside the prints, although it did not appear on the checklist.
The museum installed the work in two ground-floor galleries. Arbus had a room of her own, while Friedlander and Winogrand shared the adjoining gallery. The prints sat on boards and hung in frames behind plexiglass.
Before New Documents: Documentary as Reform
To see what changed, we need to look back. In the 1930s, the Farm Security Administration sent photographers across the United States, and their images became the standard model of documentary work. Our chapter on The Bitter Years shows how MoMA's own colleagues later revisited that archive, and our article on Migrant Mother explains its most famous picture.
Robert Frank had already complicated that model. Our review of The Americans shows how his book of the 1950s replaced the reformer's certainty with a personal, skeptical view of the country. Szarkowski built on that shift.
Szarkowski's earlier shows
Szarkowski had prepared the ground. Meister notes that Winogrand appeared in Five Unrelated Photographers (1963), and that both Winogrand and Friedlander appeared in The Photographer's Eye (1964). Consequently, New Documents did not introduce these photographers to MoMA. It gave them a stage of their own.
What Szarkowski Said About the New Documents Exhibition
The museum's record quotes Szarkowski's central statement. He wrote that a new generation had redirected documentary photography toward more personal ends, and that its aim was "not to reform life but to know it."3 Meister adds that his proposal described the work as "non-social, non-hortatory, and personal."
That sentence marks a turning point. Reformers had asked what a picture could change. Szarkowski asked what a picture could reveal. As a result, the debate moved from the subject of the photograph to the vision of the photographer.
Three different visions
The three photographers did not share a style. Arbus, who was 43 when the show opened, photographed individuals face to face, and she often chose people at the margins of American life. Friedlander, who was 32, turned the street into a dense field of signs, reflections and shadows. Winogrand, who was 39, worked fast and wide, and he caught crowds and gestures in motion.
All three had received at least one Guggenheim fellowship, according to Meister. Even so, they had very different careers. Arbus had never had a major museum show, and New Documents became the most significant exhibition of her lifetime.
How Critics Received the New Documents Exhibition
The reception was short and mixed. Meister counts about eight considered reviews, and most of them focused on Arbus. Max Kozloff's review in The Nation was the most extensive, whereas David Vestal was the most critical, arguing that the show was not revolutionary. In other words, the exhibition did not make an instant revolution in the press.
Later, however, critics measured it as a turning point. Susan Sontag's essays on Arbus, collected in On Photography (1977), kept the debate about her ethics alive, and our discussion of Regarding the Pain of Others shows how Sontag's views developed.
The catalogue that never appeared
Meister explains that a catalogue was planned but never published, because Szarkowski postponed it indefinitely in February 1967. MoMA closed that gap half a century later with Arbus Friedlander Winogrand: New Documents, 1967, a 168-page book edited by Meister.4 Therefore, for decades the show survived mostly through memory, reviews and Szarkowski's own later accounts.
The New Documents Exhibition in Its Moment
New Documents did not stand alone. According to Meister, Nathan Lyons's Toward a Social Landscape and Thomas Garver's 12 Photographers of the American Social Landscape opened around the same time. Nevertheless, the MoMA show became the most influential of the three, partly because of the museum's authority and partly because of Szarkowski's gift for compact, memorable statements.
Christopher Phillips explains why that authority mattered. His essay on the "judgment seat" of photography examines how museums such as MoMA shaped the medium's status as art.5 Szarkowski's department worked inside that institutional frame, and it gave his choices unusual weight.
After the New Documents Exhibition: Legacy
The three photographers followed very different paths. Arbus died on July 26, 1971, at the age of 48, and MoMA presented a posthumous retrospective of her work in 1972. Winogrand later became the subject of another Szarkowski project, the book and exhibition Winogrand: Figments from the Real World (1988).6
Szarkowski himself carried the argument forward. In Mirrors and Windows (1978), he divided American photography since 1960 into photographers who use the camera as a mirror of the self and those who use it as a window on the world, and our article on Mirrors and Windows follows that thesis. Likewise, the shift he named appears in New Topographics (1975), the next chapter of this series, where a cooler, more detached documentary style took over.
For a wider view of Szarkowski's approach, see our reviews of Photography Until Now and Looking at Photographs, or browse all of our exhibition articles.
Why the New Documents Exhibition Still Matters
The New Documents exhibition matters because it changed the question that photographers asked. Instead of "what should this picture change?", many began to ask "what do I see?". That shift shaped street photography, art photography and, eventually, the way museums collect and display photographs. At the same time, it left a difficult question open: when a photographer claims only to know life, who is responsible for what the picture does to the people in it?
Key Dates for the New Documents Exhibition
| Date | Event | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| 1963 | Five Unrelated Photographers | Winogrand appears in an earlier Szarkowski show |
| 1964 | The Photographer's Eye | Friedlander and Winogrand appear |
| 28 February 1967 | New Documents opens at MoMA | 94 prints by Arbus, Friedlander and Winogrand |
| 7 May 1967 | Scheduled closing date | MoMA's exhibition record; Meister reports later extensions to 15 May |
| 26 July 1971 | Arbus dies | Her most significant lifetime show stays New Documents |
| 1978 | Mirrors and Windows | Szarkowski generalizes the idea |
| 2017 | MoMA publishes the missing catalogue | The show finally gets its book |
Frequently Asked Questions
What was New Documents?
It was a 1967 photography exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. John Szarkowski curated it and presented 94 prints by Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander and Garry Winogrand.
Why was New Documents important?
It argued that documentary photography could express a personal vision instead of promoting reform. Many historians therefore treat it as a turning point for American photography.
Who were the photographers?
Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander and Garry Winogrand. They were the only three photographers in the show.
How many photographs were shown?
According to Meister, 94 prints hung on the walls: 32 by Arbus, 30 by Friedlander and 32 by Winogrand. A projection of about 80 color slides by Winogrand also ran.
Was there a catalogue?
No catalogue appeared in 1967. MoMA published a book on the exhibition in 2017, edited by Sarah Hermanson Meister.
Where can I read more?
Start with MoMA's exhibition record and Meister's essay, then read the 2017 book, all cited above.
- The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA's exhibition record. It gives the dates, the curator, the three photographers and the 2017 publication, and it quotes Szarkowski's statement of purpose.
- Sarah Hermanson Meister, Meister's essay for MoMA, MoMA course material, titled "Newer Documents." The essay reconstructs the checklist, the installation, the reception and the missing catalogue.
- John Szarkowski's statement for the exhibition, quoted in The Museum of Modern Art's exhibition record.
- Sarah Hermanson Meister, ed., Arbus Friedlander Winogrand: New Documents, 1967 (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2017). The MoMA exhibition record lists the book as a 168-page hardcover.
- Christopher Phillips, "The Judgment Seat of Photography," October 22 (1982), pp. 27–63, doi:10.2307/778362.
- John Szarkowski, Winogrand: Figments from the Real World (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1988). The book accompanied the museum's Winogrand retrospective.