Steve Szabo
				American, 1941-2000
		Website about the artist: no website
			Introduction
			Photojournalistic stardom came swiftly to this renowned artist who, while studying landscape architecture in 1962, was offered and accepted a temporary assignment assisting in the photography department at the Washington Post. Photography won. Steve Szabo freelanced in Washington, worked for a small newspaper in the Caribbean, studied the medium formally at the Art Center in Los Angeles, and returned to the Post as its youngest staff photographer. From 1965 to 1971 he covered every demonstration and riot during that tumultuous time when civil rights took center stage and Washington DC was a major arena. He won awards that included the top prize for feature photography from the prestigious White House News Photographers Association. Feeling burned out from all the violence he had witnessed and documented he retreated to the Eastern Shore for a six-month leave of absence, which stretched into a two-year sojourn. About this time, he became interested in the platinum process of making photographs, which renders a print on rag paper with the qualities of a fine etching. George Tice, a master of this technique, generously gave him a quick and thorough tutorial. Szabo moved into a 19th-century farmhouse in a remote area of Somerset County, Maryland. Here he proceeded with his large format camera to record the tranquil, haunting scenes of Americana, which had played a seductive role in his escape to the region. Woods and marshes, the play of light on water, graying and decaying houses with their silver patina, the rusting hulks of abandoned boats like beached baby whales, all devoid of life, including the birds which have lost theirs, evoke stories long forgotten. These platinum prints place us in another world, one of timelessness and bewitchment, reminiscent of work by the great painter Andrew Wyeth. They evoke the pictures of noted photographer Walker Evans, when in the 1930s he chronicled rural Alabama in a collaboration with writer James Agee producing the classic Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. One wonders at the lives enacted in these abandoned houses, the drama of the abandoned cars. Economics rendered these scenes empty of humanity--the waterman's world has collapsed, farming has dwindled for various reasons, young people do not stay. The formal structure and beauty of the photographs belie reality. They portray an elegant sense of design, a mastery of light and space. In one hypnotic picture a row of corn stands as a heraldic emblem of the original inhabitants of this land. Szabo not only was a distinguished photographer but an accomplished writer, evidenced in his book, The Eastern Shore, accompanying this body of work. He wrote warmly of his conversations with the local residents, who spoke of him as a 'move-in-er'. His descriptions of the scenes ring hauntingly true. Handsome in a sharp-jawed rustic manner, pipe in hand, with a soft, low-keyed voice, few words, riveting eye contact, Szabo could have played Sherlock Holmes to perfection. No wonder the populace was fascinated with this "foreigner" who covered himself with a large dark cloth when he worked. Steve Szabo eventually returned to the District. He became a beloved photography teacher at the Corcoran School of Art and continued to do his own work until he was stricken with Multiple Sclerosis. He died in May 2000.