Garry Winogrand

Garry Winogrand (1928, New York City – 1984) was a noted street photographer known for his portrayal of America in the mid twentieth century.

Winogrand studied painting at City College of New York and painting and photography at Columbia University in New York City in 1948. He also attended a photojournalism class taught by Alexey Brodovich at The New School for Social Research in New York City in 1951. Winogrand made his first notable appearance in 1963 at an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City. This show included Minor White, George Krause, Jerome Liebling and Ken Heyman.

In 1966 Winogrand exhibited at the George Eastman House in Rochester, NY with Lee Friedlander, Duane Michals, Bruce Davidson, and Danny Lyon in an exhibition entitled "Toward a Social Landscape". In 1967 he participated in the "New Documents" show at MOMA with Diane Arbus and Lee Friedlander. During his career, he received three Guggenheim Fellowship Awards (1964, 1969, and 1979) and a National Endowment of the Arts Award in 1979. Winogrand also taught courses in photography at the University of Texas at Austin and at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Winogrand was influenced by Walker Evans and Robert Frank and their respective publications 'American Photographs' and 'The Americans'. Henri Cartier-Bresson was obviously another primal influence although stylistically different. Winogrand was never looking for a "pretty shot". Anticipation and the timing of the taking of a photograph come into play in the work of all street photographers and Bresson was one of the first and best at this aspect of the art.

Winogrand was known for his portrayal of America in the early 1960s and his interest in social issues of the day and in the role of media in shaping attitudes. He roamed the streets of New York with his Leica rapidly taking photographs using a prefocused wide angle lens. His pictures frequently appeared as if they were driven by the energy of the events he was witnessing. While the style has been much imitated, Winogrand's eye, his visual style, and his wit, are unique, quite different in focus than the equally remarkable photographs of his contemporaries.

Winogrand's photographs of the Bronx Zoo and the Coney Island Aquarium made up his first book The Animals. (1969) a collection of pictures that don't exactly anthropomorphize the animals as much as they (quite wittily) connect humans to our evolutionary forbears.. His book Public Relations (1977) shows us press conferences with deer-in-the-headlight writers and politicians, protesters beaten up by cops, and wild museum parties frequented by the self-satisfied cultural glitterati. These photographs not only capture the evolution of a uniquely 20th and 21st century phenomenon -- the event that's created to be documented -- but it's remarkable how Winogrand's eye, style and sensibility both shaped how he saw -- and were shaped by -- his subject. The tilted camera, the frame filled with twitchy, restless motion and agitated faces, all represent an authentic and original response (now much imitated!) to the evolving culture of public relations. Just as contemporaries like Robert Frank and Diane Arbus chose specific subjects, and evolved very specific poetic, and atmospheric, responses to those subjects. In Stock Photographs 1980, Winogrand published his ghostly photographs of the Fort Worth Fat Stock Show and Rodeo.

Winogrand died of gall bladder cancer, in 1984 at age 56, leaving behind nearly 300,000 unedited images, as well as more than 2,500 undeveloped rolls of film. Some of these images have been exhibited posthumously and published in an exhibit catalog entitled Winogrand, Figments from the Real World, published by MOMA.

"Photography is not about the thing photographed. It is about how that thing looks photographed."

"I photograph to see what the world looks like in photographs."

"I like to think of photographing as a two-way act of respect. Respect for the medium, by letting it do what it does best, describe. And respect for the subject, by describing as it is. A photograph must be responsible to both."

"I don't know if all the women in the photographs are beautiful, but I do know that the women are beautiful in the photographs." (In reference to his book, "Women are Beautiful.")

"There is nothing as mysterious as a fact clearly described."

"All things are photographable."

"I don't have anything to say in any picture. My only interest in photography is to see what something looks like as a photograph. I have no preconceptions."

Books

• The Animals (1969)
• Women are Beautiful (1975)
• Public Relations (1977)
• Stock Photographs: The Fort Worth Fat Stock Show and Rodeo (1980)
• The Man in the Crowd: The Uneasy Streets of Garry Winogrand (1998)
• The Game of Photography (2001)
• Winogrand, Garry; Wilner Stack, Trudy (2002). Winogrand 1964. Arena Editions. ISBN 1-892041-62-6. (This book has color photographs).
• Winogrand, Garry; Harris, Alex, Friedlander, Lee (2002). Arrivals & Departures: The Airport Pictures of Garry
• Winogrand. Charles Rivers. ISBN 1-891024-47-7.
• Winogrand, Garry; Szarkowski, John (2003). Figments from the Real World. New York: Museum of Modern Art. ISBN 0-87070-635-7.