Garry Winogrand
Encyclopedia
Garry Winogrand was a street photographer
known for his portrayal of America
in the mid-20th century. John Szarkowski
called him the central photographer of his generation.
Winogrand was influenced by Walker Evans
and Robert Frank
and their respective publications American Photographs and The Americans
. Henri Cartier-Bresson
was another influence although stylistically different.
Winogrand was known for his portrayal of American life in the early 1960s. Many of his photographs depict the social issues of his time and in the role of media in shaping attitudes. He roamed the streets of New York with his 35mm Leica camera 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.
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 observes the connections between humans and animals. His book Public Relations (1977) shows press conferences with deer-in-the-headlight writers and politicians, protesters beaten by cops, and museum parties frequented by the self-satisfied cultural glitterati. These photographs capture the evolution of a uniquely 20th and 21st century phenomenon, the event created to be documented. In Stock Photographs (1980), Winogrand published his views of the Fort Worth Fat Stock Show and Rodeo
.
At the time of his death there was discovered about 2,500 rolls of undeveloped film, 6,500 rolls of developed but not proofed exposures, and contact sheets made from about 3,000 rolls. The Garry Winogrand Archive at the Center for Creative Photography
(CCP) comprises of over 20,000 fine and work prints, 20,000 contact sheets, 100,000 negatives and 30,500 35mm colour slides as well as a small group of Polaroid prints and several amateur motion picture films.
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.
In the early 1960s Winogrand photographed on the streets of New York City alongside Joel Meyerowitz
, Lee Friedlander
, Tod Papageorge
and Diane Arbus
.
In 1955 two of Winogrand’s photos appeared in The Family of Man
exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art
(MoMA), New York. Winogrand's first one-man show was held at Image Gallery in New York City in 1959. His first notable appearance was in Five Unrelated Photographers in 1963, also at MoMA in New York City, along with Minor White
, George Krause
, Jerome Liebling
and Ken Heyman. In 1966 Winogrand exhibited at the George Eastman House
in Rochester, New York 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 in New York City with Diane Arbus
and Lee Friedlander
, curated by John Szarkowski
.
John Szarkowski, the Director of Photography at New York's Museum of Modern Art, became an editor and reviewer of Winogrand's work. Szarkowski called him the central photographer of his generation.
In 1964 Winogrand was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship
Award to travel through America. Some of the results of this work were shown in the New Documents exhibition. He was awarded his second Guggenheim Fellowship in 1969 to continue exploring media events and their effect on the public. Between 1969 and 1976 Winogrand shot about 700 rolls of film at public events, producing 6,500 eleven by fourteen inch prints for Tod Papageorge to select for the exhibition and book Public Relations. Winogrand received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1975. In 1979 with his third Guggenheim Fellowship he moved to Los Angeles to document California. While in LA he developed 8522 rolls of film.
Winogrand worked as a commercial photographer between 1952 and 1954 at the Pix Photo Agency in Manhattan and from 1954 at Brackman Associates.
Between 1971 and 1972 Winogrand taught photography at the Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology
in Chicago and between 1973 and 1978 at the University of Texas
in Austin.
In 1952 Winogrand married Adrienne Lebow, separating in 1963 and divorcing in 1966, they had two children, Laurie and Ethan. Around 1967 Winogrand married his second wife Judy Teller, they were together until 1969. In 1972 he married Eileen Adele Hale, with whom he had a daughter, Melissa.
Winogrand died of gall bladder cancer
, in 1984 at age 56. As evidence of his prolific nature, Winogrand left behind nearly 300,000 unedited images. Some of these images have been exhibited posthumously, and published by MoMA
in the overview of his work Winogrand, Figments from the Real World.
Street photography
Street photography is a type of documentary photography that features subjects in candid situations within public places such as streets, parks, beaches, malls, political conventions and other settings....
known for his portrayal of America
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
in the mid-20th century. John Szarkowski
John Szarkowski
John Szarkowski was a photographer, curator, historian, and critic. From 1962 to 1991 Szarkowski was the Director of Photography at New York's Museum of Modern Art.-Early life and career:...
called him the central photographer of his generation.
Winogrand was influenced by Walker Evans
Walker Evans
Walker Evans was an American photographer best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration documenting the effects of the Great Depression. Much of Evans's work from the FSA period uses the large-format, 8x10-inch camera...
and Robert Frank
Robert Frank
Robert Frank , born in Zürich, Switzerland, is an important figure in American photography and film. His most notable work, the 1958 photobook titled The Americans, was influential, and earned Frank comparisons to a modern-day de Tocqueville for his fresh and skeptical outsider's view of American...
and their respective publications American Photographs and The Americans
The Americans (photography)
The Americans, by Robert Frank, was a highly influential book in post-war American photography. It was first published in France in 1958, and the following year in the United States. The photographs were notable for their distanced view of both high and low strata of American society...
. Henri Cartier-Bresson
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French photographer considered to be the father of modern photojournalism. He was an early adopter of 35 mm format, and the master of candid photography...
was another influence although stylistically different.
Winogrand was known for his portrayal of American life in the early 1960s. Many of his photographs depict the social issues of his time and in the role of media in shaping attitudes. He roamed the streets of New York with his 35mm Leica camera 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.
Winogrand's photographs of the Bronx Zoo
Bronx Zoo
The Bronx Zoo is located in the Bronx borough of New York City, within Bronx Park. It is the largest metropolitan zoo in the United States, comprising of park lands and naturalistic habitats, through which the Bronx River flows....
and the Coney Island
Coney Island
Coney Island is a peninsula and beach on the Atlantic Ocean in southern Brooklyn, New York, United States. The site was formerly an outer barrier island, but became partially connected to the mainland by landfill....
Aquarium made up his first book The Animals (1969), a collection of pictures that observes the connections between humans and animals. His book Public Relations (1977) shows press conferences with deer-in-the-headlight writers and politicians, protesters beaten by cops, and museum parties frequented by the self-satisfied cultural glitterati. These photographs capture the evolution of a uniquely 20th and 21st century phenomenon, the event created to be documented. In Stock Photographs (1980), Winogrand published his views of the Fort Worth Fat Stock Show and Rodeo
Southwestern Exposition and Livestock Show
The Southwestern Exposition and Livestock Show, known commonly as the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo is the oldest continual running livestock show and rodeo. It has been held annually in Fort Worth, Texas since 1896. In 1918, the Stock Show held the world's first indoor rodeo, and in subsequent...
.
At the time of his death there was discovered about 2,500 rolls of undeveloped film, 6,500 rolls of developed but not proofed exposures, and contact sheets made from about 3,000 rolls. The Garry Winogrand Archive at the Center for Creative Photography
Center for Creative Photography
The Center for Creative Photography , established in 1975 and located on the University of Arizona campus, is a research facility and archival repository containing the full archives of over sixty of the most famous American photographers including those of Edward Weston, Harry Callahan and Garry...
(CCP) comprises of over 20,000 fine and work prints, 20,000 contact sheets, 100,000 negatives and 30,500 35mm colour slides as well as a small group of Polaroid prints and several amateur motion picture films.
Biography
Winogrand grew up in the then predominantly Jewish working-class area of the Bronx, New York, where his father, Abraham, was a leather worker, and his mother, Bertha, made neckties for piecemeal work.Winogrand studied painting
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
at City College of New York
City College of New York
The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...
and painting and photography
Photography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
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.
In the early 1960s Winogrand photographed on the streets of New York City alongside Joel Meyerowitz
Joel Meyerowitz
Joel Meyerowitz is a street photographer who began photographing in color in 1962 and was an early advocate of the use of color during a time when there was significant resistance to the idea of color photography as serious art...
, Lee Friedlander
Lee Friedlander
Lee Friedlander is an American photographer and artist. In the 1960s and 70s, working primarily with 35mm cameras and black and white film, Friedlander evolved an influential and often imitated visual language of urban "social landscape," with many of the photographs including fragments of...
, Tod Papageorge
Tod Papageorge
Tod Papageorge is an American art photographer whose career began in the New York City street photography movement of the 1960s.Papageorge started taking photographs in 1962 as an English literature major at the University of New Hampshire....
and Diane Arbus
Diane Arbus
Diane Arbus March 14, 1923 – July 26, 1971) was an American photographer and writer noted for black-and-white square photographs of "deviant and marginal people or of people whose normality seems ugly or surreal." A friend said that Arbus said that she was "afraid.....
.
In 1955 two of Winogrand’s photos appeared in The Family of Man
The Family of Man
The Family of Man was a photography exhibition curated by Edward Steichen first shown in 1955 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.According to Steichen, the exhibition represented the 'culmination of his career'. The 508 photos by 273 photographers in 68 countries were selected from almost 2...
exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
(MoMA), New York. Winogrand's first one-man show was held at Image Gallery in New York City in 1959. His first notable appearance was in Five Unrelated Photographers in 1963, also at MoMA in New York City, along with Minor White
Minor White
Minor Martin White was an American photographer born in Minneapolis, Minnesota.White earned a degree in botany with a minor in English from the University of Minnesota in 1933. His first creative efforts were in poetry, as he took five years thereafter to complete a sequence of 100 sonnets while...
, George Krause
George Krause
George Krause is an American artist photographer, now retired from the University of Houston where he established the photography department....
, Jerome Liebling
Jerome Liebling
Jerome Liebling was an American photographer, filmmaker, and teacher.He studied photography under Walter Rosenblum and Paul Strand, and joined New York's famed Photo League...
and Ken Heyman. In 1966 Winogrand exhibited at the George Eastman House
George Eastman House
The George Eastman House is the world's oldest museum dedicated to photography and one of the world's oldest film archives, opened to the public in 1949 in Rochester, New York, USA. World-renowned for its photograph and motion picture archives, the museum is also a leader in film preservation and...
in Rochester, New York with Lee Friedlander
Lee Friedlander
Lee Friedlander is an American photographer and artist. In the 1960s and 70s, working primarily with 35mm cameras and black and white film, Friedlander evolved an influential and often imitated visual language of urban "social landscape," with many of the photographs including fragments of...
, Duane Michals
Duane Michals
Duane Michals is an American photographer. Michals' work makes innovative use of photo-sequences, often incorporating text to examine emotion and philosophy.-Education and career:...
, Bruce Davidson
Bruce Davidson (photographer)
Bruce Davidson is an American photographer. He has been a member of Magnum agency since 1958. His photographs, notably those taken in Harlem, New York City, have been widely exhibited and published in a number of books.-Youth:Bruce Davidson was born to a single mother, who worked in a factory...
, and Danny Lyon in an exhibition entitled Toward a Social Landscape. In 1967 he participated in the New Documents show at MoMA in New York City with Diane Arbus
Diane Arbus
Diane Arbus March 14, 1923 – July 26, 1971) was an American photographer and writer noted for black-and-white square photographs of "deviant and marginal people or of people whose normality seems ugly or surreal." A friend said that Arbus said that she was "afraid.....
and Lee Friedlander
Lee Friedlander
Lee Friedlander is an American photographer and artist. In the 1960s and 70s, working primarily with 35mm cameras and black and white film, Friedlander evolved an influential and often imitated visual language of urban "social landscape," with many of the photographs including fragments of...
, curated by John Szarkowski
John Szarkowski
John Szarkowski was a photographer, curator, historian, and critic. From 1962 to 1991 Szarkowski was the Director of Photography at New York's Museum of Modern Art.-Early life and career:...
.
John Szarkowski, the Director of Photography at New York's Museum of Modern Art, became an editor and reviewer of Winogrand's work. Szarkowski called him the central photographer of his generation.
In 1964 Winogrand was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
Award to travel through America. Some of the results of this work were shown in the New Documents exhibition. He was awarded his second Guggenheim Fellowship in 1969 to continue exploring media events and their effect on the public. Between 1969 and 1976 Winogrand shot about 700 rolls of film at public events, producing 6,500 eleven by fourteen inch prints for Tod Papageorge to select for the exhibition and book Public Relations. Winogrand received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1975. In 1979 with his third Guggenheim Fellowship he moved to Los Angeles to document California. While in LA he developed 8522 rolls of film.
Winogrand worked as a commercial photographer between 1952 and 1954 at the Pix Photo Agency in Manhattan and from 1954 at Brackman Associates.
Between 1971 and 1972 Winogrand taught photography at the Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology
IIT Institute of Design
Institute of Design at Illinois Institute of Technology , originally founded as the New Bauhaus, is a graduate school teaching systemic, human-centered design.- History :...
in Chicago and between 1973 and 1978 at the University of Texas
University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in Austin...
in Austin.
In 1952 Winogrand married Adrienne Lebow, separating in 1963 and divorcing in 1966, they had two children, Laurie and Ethan. Around 1967 Winogrand married his second wife Judy Teller, they were together until 1969. In 1972 he married Eileen Adele Hale, with whom he had a daughter, Melissa.
Winogrand died of gall bladder cancer
Cancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...
, in 1984 at age 56. As evidence of his prolific nature, Winogrand left behind nearly 300,000 unedited images. Some of these images have been exhibited posthumously, and published by MoMA
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
in the overview of his work Winogrand, Figments from the Real World.
Quotations by Garry Winogrand
- "A photograph is the illusion of a literal description of how the camera 'saw' a piece of time and space."
- "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.")
- "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. Museum of Modern Art, New York. ISBN 0-37451-301-5
- Women are Beautiful. 1975. Light Gallery / Farrar, Straus & Giroux. ISBN 0-87070-633-0
- Public Relations. 1977. Museum of Modern Art, New York
- Stock Photographs: The Fort Worth Fat Stock Show and Rodeo. 1980. Olympic Marketing Corp. ISBN 0-292724-33-0
- The Man in the Crowd: The Uneasy Streets of Garry Winogrand. 1998. Fraenkel Gallery. ISBN 1-881337-05-7
- The Game of Photography. 2001. Tf Edition. ISBN 8-49518-366-8
- Winogrand 1964. 2002. Arena Editions. ISBN 0-374513-01-5
- Arrivals & Departures: The Airport Pictures of Garry Winogrand. 2002. Charles Rivers. ISBN 1-891024-47-7
- Figments from the Real World. 2003. Museum of Modern Art, New York. ISBN 0-87070-635-7
Selected Solo Exhibitions
- 1986. "Little-known Photographs by Garry Winogrand", Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
- 1985. Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts
- 1984. "Recent Works", Houston Center for Photography, Texas
- 1984. "Women are Beautiful", Zabriskie Gallery, New York
- 1984. "Garry Winogrand: A Celebration", Light Gallery, New York
- 1983. "Big Shots, Photographs of Celebrities, 1960-80", Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
- 1981. Light Gallery, New York
- 1981. The Burton Gallery of Photographic Art, Toronto
- 1980. Galerie de Photographie, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris
- 1980. "Garry Winogrand: Retrospective", Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco,
- 1980. University of Colorado, Boulder
- 1979. "Greece", Light Gallery, New York
- 1979. "The Rodeo", Alan Frumkin Gallery, Chicago
- 1977. The Cronin Gallery, Houston
- 1977. Light Gallery, New York
- 1975. "Women are Beautiful", Light Gallery, New York
- 1972. Light Gallery, New York
- 1969. "The Animals", The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Selected Group Exhibitions
- 1983. "Masters of the Street: Henri Cartier-Bresson, Josef Koudelka, Robert Frank and Garry Winogrand", University Gallery, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- 1981. "Central Park Photographs: Lee Friedlander, Tod Papageorge and Garry Winogrand", The Dairy in Central Park, New York, 1980
- 1981. "Bruce Davidson and Garry Winogrand", Moderna Museet / Fotografiska Museet, Stockholm, Sweden
- 1981. "Garry Winogrand, Larry Clark and Arthur Tress", G. Ray Hawkins Gallery, Los Angeles
- 1978. "Mirrors and Windows: American Photography since 1960", The Museum of Modern Art, New York
- 1977. "Public Relations", The Museum of Modern Art, New York
- 1976. "The Great American Rodeo", The Fort Worth Art Museum, Texas
- 1975. "14 American Photographers", The Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland
- 1971. "Seen in Passing", Latent Image Gallery, Houston
- 1970. "The Descriptive Tradition: Seven Photographers", Boston University, Massachusetts
- 1969. "New Photography USA", Traveling exhibition prepared for the International Program of The Museum of Modern Art, New York
- 1964. "The Photographer’s Eye", The Museum of Modern Art, New York
- 1963. "Photography ‘63", The George Eastman House of Photography, Rochester, New York
- 1957. "Seventy Photographers Look at New York", The Museum of Modern Art, New York
- 1955. "The Family of ManThe Family of ManThe Family of Man was a photography exhibition curated by Edward Steichen first shown in 1955 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.According to Steichen, the exhibition represented the 'culmination of his career'. The 508 photos by 273 photographers in 68 countries were selected from almost 2...
", The Museum of Modern Art, New York
External links
- Garry Winogrand & Bill Moyers video, with transcript
- Winogrand's overview
- Coffee and Workprints: A Workshop With Garry Winogrand
- Another Workshop With Garry Winogrand
- An Interview with Garry Winogrand
- Review of Winogrand, Figments from the Real World, by Philip Greenspun
- Garry Winogrand: Huge Influence, Early Exit, by Frank Van Riper
- Garry Winogrand's Leica M4
- Photography as a Framing Art