Garry Winogrand

(1928-1984)

Garry Winogrand; Leo Rubinfien, Editor; SFMOMA, Yale Press

Excerpts

“One of the greatest photographers of the twentieth century, Garry Winogrand revealed essential characteristics of American life as few artists have done before or since, showing its beauty and brutality as well as its accidental humor. Best known for his photographs of Manhattan during the sixties, he was an epic chronicler of that tumultuous decade. But Winogrand was also an avid traveler and roamed extensively around the United States, bringing exquisite work out of nearly every region of the country. ‘You could say that I’m a student of photography,’ Winogrand reflected, ‘and I am—but really I’m a student of America.’”

Garry Winogrand, Edited by Leo Rubinfien, Dust Jacket

“When Garry Winogrand came to prominence in the sixties, his work was, to some, an unfathomable mystery; to others, it seemed to point a way to the future of photography itself. Rich with ambiguity and seemingly haphazard detail, Winogrand’s street photographs wryly observe the comic, bizarre, and sometimes disturbing tenor of human relations. In forsaking easy story lines for unresolved moments that never quite coalesce, the artist challenges us to look again at those everyday encounters that typically go unnoticed; to question the assumptions we carry into them; and finally, to reconsider our place in the larger world. Time has not diminished these qualities, and it seems almost unimaginable that a quarter-century has elapsed since the last major retrospective of his pictures.”

Garry Winogrand, Neal Benezra, Earl A Powell III, Director’s Forward, p. 6

“In the last few years of his life, Garry Winogrand was widely considered one of te most important and influential photographers of the twentieth century. His innovative, even radically inventive pictures—with their centrifugal compositions, tilted horizons, and decontextualized, mysterious details—captivated many people who saw them in exhibitions, books, magazines, or the slide shows he presented at colleges and art schools across the United States. To those willing to look carefully, Winogrand demonstrated how photography could be as rich, meaningful, and evocative as the most exalted of the fine arts, and how it could speak not just of the local and transitory appearances of things, but of all that e most deeply know and feel. His work combines the hope and exhilaration that flourished in the post-World War II era with a powerful sense of anxiety, illuminating a country that seems both at the height of its powers and on the edge of spinning out of control. Winogrand revealed essential characteristics of American life as few photographers have done before or since, showing its beauty and brutality as well as its accidental humor, and his photographs present a world we still know and contend with today.”

“Indeed, it has been difficult for people coming to his pictures for the first time to grasp their meaning, the exceptional scope of his vision, the importance of his contribution to American art, or his relevance to contemporary concerns.”

“Winogrand had always worked in a headlong way, preferringto spend another day shooting rather than processing his film or editing his pictures. No prints existed of many of the best photographs he made in his first decades, and he left behind over sixty-five hundred rolls of film from his later years that he had never processed, or that he had processed by never proofed, and whose contents he had therefore never seen. The prints he made were mostly uncatalogued; all but those he produced specifically for sale or exhibition were unsigned, untitled, and undated; and though his negatives and proof sheets—the heart of his work—were numbered, there was not indication of where one year ended and another began or where in the world Winogrand was when he exposed any given roll of film.”

Garry Winogrand, Leo Rubinfien, Erin O’Toole, Sarah Greenough, Introduction, p. 9

“Although his photographs were shown in numerous exhibitions at museums and galleries, these shows usually presented what interested him at the moment, and all but one of the five books published during his lifetime focused on specific subjects: zoo animals, women, public and political events of the late 1960s, the Forth Worth Rodeo. Nowhere—except in slide shows he often gave in his last decades—was there a suggestion of the breadth of his vision.”

Garry Winogrand, Leo Rubinfien, Erin O’Toole, Sarah Greenough, Introduction, p. 10

“During his life, Winogrand made no effort to publish a summation of his work, and although he admired photographic books such as Walker Evan’s American Photographs and Robert Frank’s Americans, which achieved their effects partly by connecting diverse pictures, he spoke only vaguely of attempting such a book himself. His enormous energy, his insistent desire to move forward rather than look back, his delight in the profusion of life and photographic detail, and his affection for all of his photographs help to account for his reluctance to codify his work. Beyond all this he realized that photographs in general, and his in particular, are deeply ambiguous objects open to numerous, often equally compelling interpretations. To fix his work as a limited selection of images in a set sequence very likely ran opposite to his instincts.”

Garry Winogrand, Leo Rubinfien, Erin O’Toole, Sarah Greenough, Introduction, p. 11

“Garry Winogrand’s numerous friends have always spoken soon, if not immediately, of his mountainous energy. They use the word to point to many things—how early he got up each day, or the vast volume of his work, or his ravenous interest in the world; his ebullience, his combativeness, or how, when he was younger, he would lunge through the crowd as he photographed…”

“Perhaps two million people passed through Winogrand’s photographs, estimating roughly—one percent of more of everyone in America during his productive years.”

“Winogrand did not choose photography, he said, he fell into it, but he would then say that he had needed it desperately, and although people remember their days with him to have been full of hilarity, he regarded his work with utter seriousness. ‘I function out of terror,’ he declared near the end, and while he was mocking himself just then, he said few things frivolously. Whatever he meant by it, terror appears to have been a real presence in his life.”

Garry Winogrand, Leo Rubinfien, Down from the Bronx, p. 13

“Meanwhile, on the other side of Winogrand, there was a profound humbleness that verged on passivity and pointed towards despair—in its own way, perhaps, another product of the great irreconcilables of which his age was made. That this trait was there beside his force and command hardly seemed possible to those who knew him, but it accounts for much of what is deepest in his work, and while it was subtle at first, it would come to speak more powerfully than almost anything else.”

Garry Winogrand, Leo Rubinfien, Down from the Bronx, p. 14

“Winogrand seems to declare that life cannot be known unless it is scrutinized fragment by physical fragment, and there is an insurgent, democratic insistence here that he will believe his own eyes before he listens to anyone else.”

“Until his last years, Winogrand would seem to have associated the down-and-out with sentimentality, rejecting the prime concern of the Photo League and the documentary photographers of the thirties and before.”

Garry Winogrand, Leo Rubinfien, Down from the Bronx, p. 18

“It seems certain that Evans’s book, Frank’s even more, made Winogrand chafe sorely against the shape of his own working life. They showed him both how profound photographs could be and how one might spend one’s days if one followed one’s own direction.

Garry Winogrand, Leo Rubinfien, Down from the Bronx, p. 23

“Typically, a photojournalist would use a wide lens for context and a long for detail, wide for where and long for who… Telephoto, with its nebulous fore- and backgrounds, said naturally how important the photographer believed one element of the larger story to be and that the reader should feel as strongly about it himself. It was perhaps the main optical tool of magazine humanism, and when Winogrand began to abandon it, around 1957, he was renouncing a world of emotion and understanding. Been keen enough to read character as richly with a wide lens as one ordinarily did with a long, he was starting to make photographs in which a sprawling space certain unmoored facts a prominence vivid and sometimes even weird. Now the details worked against, not for, the unity and logic of the story. The picture no longer brought you intimately in upon a pair of rueful eyes, but told you that the world was a jumble of fragments, that the truth was more complex than any account could be. It seems likely that Winogrand felt now that telephoto expressed a phony sympathy between photographer and subject. In his way of seeing, long now expressed sentimentality; wide, neutrality. Long meant sincerity; wide, authenticity.”

Garry Winogrand, Leo Rubinfien, Down from the Bronx, p. 23, 24

“Winogrand was a skeptic well before the convulsions of the sixties spread skepticism far and wide, and he would steadily become more of one, with regard not just to photography or politics but to many aspects of how Americans lived, what they wanted, and how they pursued it.”

“This sense—of the world as a teeming current, endlessly complex—is perhaps the most important, and pointed forward to all that Winogrand would be doing ten and twenty years on.”

Garry Winogrand, Leo Rubinfien, Down from the Bronx, p. 24

“It could be said that as he approached 1960, Winogrand became fully an artist, or if he had always been one, that he became conscious of it then. …his pictures had little narrative content at all, only an implication of narrative at best.”

Garry Winogrand, Leo Rubinfien, Down from the Bronx, p. 25

“He was traveling now in a direction nearly opposite [the exquisite visual order of HCB], seeking in a photograph not the perfect resolution but the maximum of anarchy it might embrace before it fell apart. His movement here ran close to his rejection of picture-story and its tired dramaturgy; it too threw over the pleasing certainty for the hailing randomness of experience and, philosophically, this reached far. You might be honest, his fragmenting, enigmatic photographs said, only if you embraced doubt and not-knowing, but to do this might bring you ore freedom than you had ever had.”

Garry Winogrand, Leo Rubinfien, Down from the Bronx, p. 25, 26

“Winogrand, though when he was asked, as he would soon and often be, what his work said about the human condition, would answer with disdain and regret and a suggestion that this was wearying even to contemplate… He doubted that photography could support those extravagant claims [of social documentary photographers], or, for that matter, that any photographer ever understood what he was doing as well as he imagined. He may even have objected to the wish to understand. It was when one gave that up that one had a chance of discovering something.”

“Winogrand usually denied that there was ambiguity in his photographs, insisting on their concreteness, but when they are good they are of course ambiguous, containing not one but many meanings. They say that the facts are paramount, yet at once that the facts are not enough; they demand strict honesty about what a photograph can truthfully tell, and hold a righteous view of what it must pass over in silence.”

“… Winogrand was usually far from glory or riot or murder, photographing incidents so small that they dissolved even as they occurred. No matter if what you felt was as large as the nation, he might have said, you had to work with what your hand could touch.”

Garry Winogrand, Leo Rubinfien, Down from the Bronx, p. 26

“When a photograph has any value as art, what it says can’t be said in words, and Winogrand was highly reticent about what his photographs might mean…. They (Winogrand, Arbus, Friedlander) were, again, emerging from a culture that expected a journalistic directness of meaning from photographs and tied a photographer’s importance to the grandeur of his aims…. and Winogrand, when asked why he photographed, said similarly that it was to find out what things looked like, in photographs, provoking more than a little fury among people who wanted declarations of purpose. He was often thought to be devaluing people in his pictures, or playing dumb. Today, it may be easier to see that his caution…. meant to protect the ambiguity that was the great beauty of photographs and keep them from being crushed under a truckload of message.”

Garry Winogrand, Leo Rubinfien, Down from the Bronx, p. 35

“… Papageorge was particularly aware of of the transformative power of pictures. In time he would teach that a photograph was a fiction too, going beyond the effort to unchain it from narrative and releasing it even from the actuality it described… Even though in 1967 Szarkowski emphasized that Arubs, Friedlander, and Winogrand had junked the old reformer’s program of the documentary, he still called their picturesd ‘documents.’ Papageorge, however, rejected the word early. To use it, even innocently, he argued, was to say that photographs were dumb transcriptions of the real—to say that they were not art. Not much later, Winogrand began reacting angrily when it was said that his photographs were documentary…”

Garry Winogrand, Leo Rubinfien, Down from the Bronx, p. 36

{speaking of plate 150} “… Winogrand knew exactly what he wanted. He must have sensed, faster than thought could grasp it, that this thing contained layer upon layer of meaning and that he had to have the photograph to be able to read them. As reportage it is trivial, but as symbol, it is enormous.”

Garry Winogrand, Leo Rubinfien, Down from the Bronx, p. 36, 37

“He wanted to describe ‘the chaos of life,’… and so moved ever more toward pictures that could seem almost formless, that drew the world’s unhinging into their own substance.”

Garry Winogrand, Leo Rubinfien, Down from the Bronx, p. 39

“He filled his days with the exposing of film, he plugged with shooting the gaps before the bus drew up or the waitress brought lunch, he went to the airport hours before his flight to shoot more there. He called it a way of life, and if, as he often said, it enabled him to get out of himself—to forget, temporarily, such anger, anxiety, and confusion as roiled within him—this was a negative way of explaining it. At its deepest, it was the making of pictures not even to have those pictures—though they were important—but for the sake of seeing honestly, so that by freeing oneself from false sentiment, self-importance, and all kinds of fatuous, trite, or half-baked ideas, one might live authentically. His ferocious insistence on the primacy of seeing brought him to regard almost every aspect of camera work—from research, printing, and interpretation to the editing of books, exhibiting, and publishing—as extraneous, if not a suspect diversion from a photographer’s essential purpose.”

Garry Winogrand, Leo Rubinfien, Down from the Bronx, p. 41

“Chaos was not only the subject of his photographs, it was their reason for being, the wish to hold it back being much of Winogrand’s motivation, and chaos was also their enemy, as it threatened to subvert each picture he attempted. It was his own enemy, in that, if it overtook them, if he could pull no strand of redemption out of droves of faces and gestures that swirled in the avenues before him, then he would have nothing left, while the upside, if he succeeded, was uncertain, except for the charge of pleasure he must have felt when he got a picture right.”

Garry Winogrand, Leo Rubinfien, Down from the Bronx, p. 42, 43

“He was a driven man, but within him desperation was inseparable from natural appetite and from the steep exhilaration a gambler feels on a winning streak, and perhaps even as his good luck threatens to turn.”

Garry Winogrand, Leo Rubinfien, Down from the Bronx, p. 42

“Photography was passive at its core, he asserted, and from here the link between submission and authenticity seems to have solidified in his mind. His work had always made much room for chance and dissolution, but this was a far sterner iteration of the idea that one should look for the point where form was nearly overwhelmed by fact. If a photographer gave in and let reality roll over him, he might now approach the truth.”

Garry Winogrand, Leo Rubinfien, Down from the Bronx, p. 44

“… yet he traveled far enough to paraphrase T. S. Eliot when he wanted to, and suggest that artists often fail because they insist on being conscious when they should be unconscious.”

“Form was the point of art, he argued, though dissolution was the nucleus of his, and while he insisted on the unimportance of content—it’s not about about, he might have said,—he put at the center of his vision the character of his country in a time of epochal transformation. And if in doing so he became sort of a historian, he was one who worked mostly with the trivial and the ever-present; the glance of an eye, the twist of a foot. He was adamant about what could not be rendered in words… yet unyielding in almost all he uttered. He was rational, but not less intuitive; he was methodically, obsessively skeptical yet always, it seemed, toward some ascendant end, as if doubt were the highway to truth. His work looked transparent, yet it was thoroughly inflected. One often characterizes Winogrand in a certain way, immediately to see the opposite idea assert itself.”

Garry Winogrand, Leo Rubinfien, Down from the Bronx, p. 50

“… even as his work made its exhilarating flight through the age, he arrived at the dark and shining recognition that one cannot fly until one has accepted one’s essential insignificance.”

Garry Winogrand, Leo Rubinfien, Down from the Bronx, p. 50

“… his conviction that he photographed to find out what things looked like in photographs…”

Garry Winogrand, Leo Rubinfien, Down from the Bronx, p. 52

“Every strong Winogrand picture begins by speaking of its immediate situation, making the narrowness of its point of view an essential part of what it has to tell.”

Garry Winogrand, Leo Rubinfien, Down from the Bronx, p. 52

“… he began [in the 1950s] to show an ironic reserve, eschewing the grand moral statement and conspicuously rejecting the conventional sentiments of photojournalism. This was highly contrary in a time that demanded passionate side-taking, and Winogrand was sometimes accused of caring only for the form of his photographs and not their subjects. Yet, in fact, no photographer of his period engaged more deeply with the story of life in those inflamed and shocking years. What distinguished Winogrand was his awareness that a photograph was not only unable to change the world but unable even to explain it.”

Garry Winogrand, Leo Rubinfien, A Student of America, p. 182

“Only a few months later [early 1978]… John Szarkowski… hailed him as the central photographer of his generation—high praise indeed as his contemporaries included such luminaries as Diane Arbus, Robert Frank, and Lee Friedlander.”

Garry Winogrand, Sarah Greenough, The Mystery of the Visible: Garry Winogrand and Postwar American Photography, p. 382

[At the time of Winogrand’s exhibition Public Relations in the late 1970s] “Leo Rubinfien noted that, of all the photographers who had recorded America in the previous decade, ‘Winogrand alone was able to construct what is, in sum, an epic view of the ’60s.’ But many others judged it to be far from satisfactory. Shelley Rice wrote that the work was ‘strangely reminiscent of bad photojournalism: lacking in viewpoint, visual focus and pictorial coherence.’ Winogrand’s pictures are ‘conceptually shallow,’ she asserted, devoid of ‘sharp insight into the complicated political and sociological currents of a very difficult time in recent history.’ Michael Edelson scoffed that the had ‘seen better images in the reject box at Associated Press’ and that Winogrand’s ‘decidedly second-rate’ photographs revealed his ‘slack, indulgent eye’ and ‘leave the viewer confused as to what, where, and why the photograph was ever taken in the first place.’ Winogrand ‘thinks of his camera as a weapon,’ Candida Finkel complained, using it both as a physical tool to defend himself against people whose ‘privacy he invades’ and as a ‘metaphorical weapon… to take away human vitality and integration with the world.’ She continued: his titles ‘frustrate us,’ his sequencing is ‘illogical,’ and he ‘admits that he cares nothing for [his subjects] as people—it is only their transient appearance which interests him.’

Garry Winogrand, Sarah Greenough, The Mystery of the Visible, p. 383

“In the early seventies [Winogrand] was frequently interviewed by students and the press, and his ideas about photography were widely quoted. Renouncing photography’s capacity to tell stories and its role in journalism, he asserted that ‘still photographs [have] no narrative ability.’ Negating the medium’s rich heritage as a tool for social reform, he flatly stated, ‘I don’t have anything to say in any picture.’ And when asked about photography’s supposed link to veracity and if the camera ever lied, he replied, ‘If there is such a thing as truth, it’s a lie.’ All you know from a photograph is ‘how a piece of time and space ‘looks’ to a camera.’ Instead, he bluntly stated that his objective was to explore ‘the contrast between form and content,’ and he encouraged critics, curators, and casual observers to write whatever they wanted to about his pictures but admonished them to banish all talk of the ‘mumbo-jumbo’ of meaning: ‘It’s nothing to worry about! It doesn’t have anything to do with taking pictures!’

Garry Winogrand, Sarah Greenough, The Mystery of the Visible, p. 384

“He came to be regarded as someone who was producing a mind-numbing accumulation of images whose overall importance was difficult to gauge; whose meaning was undercut by his own lack of discrimination; and whose individual successes could be chalked up not to intelligence—the attribute he valued above all others—nor to skill, focus, or even drive, but to pure luck.”

Garry Winogrand, Sarah Greenough, The Mystery of the Visible, p. 385

“And she [Henrietta Brackman, agent] warned him not to allow ‘emotional reasons’ to cloud his assessment of ‘the actual qualities of an image.’ This may help explain why Winogrand later felt it was important to let his film ‘age’ after he exposed it, so that the fun he had while taking the pictures would not cloud his assessment of their merits. As Brackman cautioned, ‘You love your picture for the memory it evokes, but is it really a fine picture?’”

Garry Winogrand, Sarah Greenough, The Mystery of the Visible, p. 388

“As he ingratiated himself with subjects, Winogrand said that he looked at how people carried themselves, for ‘bodies speak in attitudes, in the way they move, walk, sit, and lie. They are almost as expressive as when a person opens his mouth and talks.’”

Garry Winogrand, Sarah Greenough, The Mystery of the Visible, p. 389

“Later disparaging much of this work [Collier’s and Pageant Magazines, 1953], he told Papageorge that a photojournalist need to know how to make only two kinds of pictures: ‘a big head shot… and a man walking down a beach, looking thoughtful.’”

Garry Winogrand, Sarah Greenough, The Mystery of the Visible, p. 390

“… he understood that [Walker] Evan’s ‘photographs are about what is photographed and how things exist in photographs. No picture-making system or visual devices are employed here beyond clear description, lucidity.’”

Garry Winogrand, Sarah Greenough, The Mystery of the Visible, p. 391

“… we can hypothesize that Evan’s photographs helped him at this time… to envision the photographer as a kind of ‘collector.’”

Garry Winogrand, Sarah Greenough, The Mystery of the Visible, p. 391

“‘In other words, the photographer doesn’t have ideas of nice pictures in his head. He’s looking out there and decides what he wants to collect, and let’s the look of the picture take care of itself.’ From these comments and others, we might conclude, as Winogrand later did, that what he chose to photograph and how he framed and composed the picture were suddenly inextricably united, and that photography, as he later said, instantly ‘got seductive in a much more more interesting and complicated way.’”

Garry Winogrand, Sarah Greenough, The Mystery of the Visible, p. 392

“If Evans exerted an immediate influence on him, it was not as a visual model but as a conceptual challenge to think more deeply about how photographs were constructed as pictures and to focus less on the physicality of the act of taking pictures or the physicality of ‘seeing, feeling, and smelling’ his subjects, as he had done earlier, and more on the physicality of the thing created, the picture itself.”

Garry Winogrand, Sarah Greenough, The Mystery of the Visible, p. 392

“Winogrand frequently acknowledged his debt to [Robert] Frank, applauding not only the seeming casualness of his pictures—as if they had been caught, as was often said, ‘on the fly’—but also their remarkably sophisticated construction [of pictorial space].”

Garry Winogrand, Sarah Greenough, The Mystery of the Visible, p. 393

“… he realized that Frank could not have known when he saw the scene how it was going to look as a picture: he discovered that through the act of photographing it, and in the process he transformed reality into something else±—into a picture.”

Garry Winogrand, Sarah Greenough, The Mystery of the Visible, p. 393

“Frank showed how the documents of a photojournalist could be transformed into a dark, mournful poetry, thus creating not an illustration of American life but an entirely independent work of art. That, too, became Winogrand’s aspiration.

Garry Winogrand, Sarah Greenough, The Mystery of the Visible, p. 394

“… Winogrand explained… the challenge all photographers face was ‘How do you make a photograph that is more interesting than what actually happened? How do you make a photograph that is more beautiful than what was photographed? That’s really our problem. How do you beat it?’”

Garry Winogrand, Sarah Greenough, The Mystery of the Visible, p. 396

“… Szarkowski wrote that Winogrand ‘constructed clever evasions to distance himself from the moral implications that others might see in the world of his pictures.’ Contending that Winogrand ‘was protecting himself from the dangerous, often disabling condition of being simultaneously artist and critic…’”

Garry Winogrand, Sarah Greenough, The Mystery of the Visible, p. 396

“‘Don’t drop your camera! That’s my first rule of photography. In fact, it’s my only rule of photography!’“

Garry Winogrand, Tod Papageorge, In the City, p. 400

“‘A still photograph is the illusion of a literal description of how a camera saw a piece of time and space.’”

Garry Winogrand, Tod Papageorge, In the City, p. 402

“‘There is nothing so mysterious as a fact clearly described.’”

Garry Winogrand, Tod Papageorge, In the City, p. 402

“… but what I remember about the relatively few contact sheets of his that I saw during those years [late 60s] is how may strong photographs there were on them that Garry left unmarked, proof of his insistence that he wasn’t interested in pictures that reminded him of others he’d made or seen before.”

Garry Winogrand, Tod Papageorge, In the City, p. 404, 405

“When asked why he took photographs, Winogrand would usually answer in one of three ways: ‘To see what things look like photographed,’ ‘to get outside of myself,’ or ‘for my own education.’ These responses were not, as some of his critics would have it, cheeky dodges to questions he didn’t want to answer. They were, in fact, true. Photography was a path to ends whose importance was absolute to him but that were difficult to define.”

Garry Winogrand, Erin O’Toole, How Much Freedom Can You Stand? Garry Winogrand and the Problem of Posthumous Editing, p. 422

“‘Sometimes I feel like… the world is a place I bought a ticket to. It’s a big show for me, as if it wouldn’t happen if I wasn’t there with a camera.’ When he was out photographing, he said, he even felt like he himself was a performer.”

1980 Interview, David Fahey

Style

- focus on women, often expressive of sensual/sexual

- quick shots while subjects walk by

- subjects moving (not so in late work)

- energized scenes (not so in late work)

- easily discernible subject

- compositions favor subjects moving into center of frame vs. rule of thirds

- subjects not posed, usually not looking into camera – gives feeling photographer is invisible looking in from the outside

- interaction between multiple subjects

- unconcern for tilted horizon

- subject(s) fill frame, little visual context

- seemingly haphazard detail

- serendipitous ironies

Themes (Garry Winogrand, Leo Rubinfien, Down from the Bronx, p. 19)

- women, usually beautiful, often young

- men, mostly young or middle-aged, mostly middle or upper class, often in suits

- children

- animals

- spectacle

- political events

- the compromised (dwarves, cripples, wounded)

- cars and other luxuries of postwar life

- space, raw and gaping

Plates

Down From The Bronx

1 early morning loneliness of returning sailor having served his country yet no one cares

2 fashion is in, 11 statuesque mannequins thrusting forth the new overwhelming the to dowdy figures humbled and downcast before them

3 action/energy, expression - can feel cold, large feet, no gloves

4 phallic symbols: erect hot dog on billboard and cigar and tie, dapper black man amidst crowd of whites, cynical expression possibly of distaste, girl looking through crook of arm

5 the pretense of a boy’s hilarity in the presence - perhaps to impress—the girl brooding in assessment

6 the energy of the times post WWII, a military presence, marching with glee into a new year of boundless potential

7 the pain of a young woman barely coping with a hard life, two middle aged babushka-type women having learned long ago how to get through it all, a businessman unconcerned reading his paper

8 a society woman bedecked with jewelry, a slender cane and cigarette dangling, so distressed that she’s caused concern in the two men watching her

9 strong directional focus of people laughing/pointing at man on far right, not sure what is happening, dark image

10 pursed lips mirrored on two men, concentration, dread

11 crowd of people moving through difficulty of getting to another day of work, two women’s gaze interacting questioning one another’s being

12 political operatives out in front of rally, controlling the masses

13 interesting composition and elements, not sure of what is happening

14 two men engaged with an event, woman in focus engaged sucking in cigarette smoke/drug

15 close up, wonderful composition

16 details: shoes, movement with tilt, great shadow of cigarette providing context

17 jubilation/joy of playing in the surf

18 behind the scenes, ordinariness behind the show business of burlesque

19 intriguing geometric lines in sidewalk, coat seam, coat flapping

20 powerful emotion: boy upset, mother’s tense arm holding him back, strong compositional placement of woman’s crotch communicates original source of trouble

21 photo from inside of car of two African American men whose smiles/smirks at camera communicate contempt

22 two businessmen strolling staring into camera with looks of “hey, what are you doing?”, sharp angle of building’s corner reinforces statement

23 haggard woman, mouth agape in midst of busy movement in contrast to another woman holding back what’s bothering her seemingly moving out or sync with rest of crowd

24 interaction of three individuals - man, monkey, woman in convertible: man questioning monkey’s aggressive cry, woman considering what’s happening

25 black man and white woman arm in arm strolling along busy sidewalk with “Disgraced: Girls Gone Wild” on theatre marquee behind: life imitating art

26 two men and a fashionably dressed woman with hair in curlers walking out of empty street scene, woman downcast, man behind staring at back of woman, man next to her looking of shoulder questioning something—communicates a feeling of “just let us be, go on our way, do our own thing”

27 contrast of four people looking at different things, yet duplicates of pearl necklaces — one with five strands and one solitary, tilted buildings reinforce movement

28 couple walking in embrace, eyes cast downward, looks anything but happy

29 looks of four subjects compressed together communicate dread

30 circular composition leading eye from people on left to man on phone in back to woman and man on right who seems in a hurry to communicate what man on phone is being told

31 policewoman chin held high reinforced by that of man behind and stern forward progress of man in front—communicates need for police power

32 man crossing busy street going about his business in the midst of traffic with new cars on a truck overtaking old cars on the road

33 uncomfortable woman in foreground glared at by woman in background amidst cold, snowy, dark scene

34 sidewalk filled with crowd of people bustling by under Walk sign with man in center halted in progress by his questioning/determined gaze — as if questioning progress of the day and time

35 close up of two women in foreground with crowded sidewalk behind, one woman worried and biting nails, the other a downward look of hopelessness

36 woman dancing with man, woman with sharp, pointed nails and mouth of white teeth with hair neatly parted assaulting man with glee — communicates women increasing dominance

37 man upside down in mid air in irony mimicking Flamingo sign behind with word “froze” in corner

38 burlesque performers in casualness of dressing room, woman’s face communicating mundaneness

39 dark grainy image of a handful of brave, serious looking souls sheltering from the rain under coats and umbrellas watching a football game, player in foreground worn out—communicates toughness of getting through entire game/all of life

40 performers in a mummer’s parade, two in foreground dancing in delight as if no cares in the world through the streets on a heavily clouded day

41 two men kissing, one blurred expresses action, unusually close-up with telephoto lens

42 table of high society, white tie opera patrons, woman seems to be holding breasts with men on either side admiring

43 off-camera portrait of a joyous Louis Armstrong and Velma Middleton with no background elements to add context

44 fraternity members hands held high to catch large falling orb, expressions of fear and desperation

45 image of New York street from above, 11 people moving through frame amidst falling ticker tape paper

46 a couple toasting champaign at the opera, exciting hopeful glance at one another, seemingly unknown, extraneous element in lower left corner leads eye to woman (likely left in photo for that reason)

47 busy sidewalk with two happy men talking in background and large central figure of businessman with look of facing some difficulty in foreground

48 the lower legs of a fallen figure extending into the lower left of the image, pool of blood and bloody hat in center beneath what appears to be the backside of a large policeman headed toward a young boy transfixed by the scene

49 scene of three men moving along busy sidewalk, two smoking, all three with somber, concerned looks, clipped sign behind: “grow together”

50 compressed image of two unconcerned white women in the background, two others in focus in the center with one seeming to push forward an African American man with head bowed in seeming submission

51 three well-dressed/coiffed women promenading toward the camera each prominently carrying a purse with eyes on the photographer, concern/fear in eyes of one of right, concern in eyes of one on left, allure in eyes of one in center with very large particularly prominent handbag clutched in front of her mid-section, man in background appreciating view of women ahead

52 close-up of eleven or more men squashed into an elevator, most eyes focused directly on photographer, communicating lack of appreciation for having photo taken

53 stately composition on sidewalk with woman enlarged by lens with back to camera and arm extended out to nearby wall thereby framing view of another woman interacting with looking directly into the camera eyes shielded by 50s sunglasses, a look of why on her face

54 crowd of hundreds of people viewing outdoor aquarium performance with focus on central figure standing with bucket feeding standing seal, irony and powerful frame-filling use of wide-angle lens

55 two well-dressed apparently well-to-do young women walking out of frame filled with women walking toward camera, woman on left staring downward to her left at unseen other (only the hand and wrist of a small child), communicates sense of pulling up a child into the prosperity and forward progress of the times

56 businessman in suit and hat walking out of right side of frame, horizon tilted suggesting haste, forward-looking eyes and a hard, determined expression communicating intent to stride into a known future, wide-angle lens very close to subject

57 close-up of fashionably-dressed young woman striding purposefully toward photographer, right hand held at (as if tilting hand to stranger), intense expression eyes staring directly at lens, man walking directly behind starting at camera as well, compression of image suggests telephoto lens

58 foreground filled with long, dark Cadillac sedan its front and rear outside frame, modern vehicle in contrast to cobblestones over which it drives, driver smoking cigar pointing in direction of movement right to left, clothing manufacturing and restaurant in background, communicates direction, haste, intentional movement into his future

59 three businessmen prominently featured in foreground walking almost directly into photographer, center two with downward looking expressions of intent able to deal with whatever is ahead, man partially outside left side of frame with eyes closed and expression of inability or lack of interest in whatever is ahead

60 woman with head bowed, body leaning in forward direction carrying suitcase and purse ahead of multitude of people on sidewalk and departing bus behind, communicates moving toward new start

61 small head and shoulders of Eisenhower seen through a mostly black masked image

62 eleven people, mostly women, in a crowded frame from a political rally, three women staring at something behind photographer, one with her mouth agape and head covered looking witch-like, another woman pointing an index finger into the face of a man seemingly telling him what is what

63 political rally, very close-up view of crowd pushing into the frame, communicates interest and enthusiasm of the crowd

64 inside political meeting, somber faces, one woman pointing forward while looking to someone behind her with an expression as if she is clarifying something important

65 crowded frame of political rally with Nixon moving past rubbernecking crowd in an open convertible

66 uninteresting image of street in aftermath of rally

67 unimpressive image of pageant queen on float moving down street with young boy bent over to get a view and a poorly drawn picture of Kennedy in the foreground

68 casual portrait of a young Elsa Martinelli, actress/model, smoking with liquor bottles beside her, looking directly into camera with a “is this what you want” look

69 attractive, well-dressed woman in center foreground walking down sidewalk but half turned to look back at photographer, an unconcerned expression on face, tilted horizon, out of focus people in background

70 the backsides of three fashionably dressed young women walking away from photographer, a simple study of women

71 dense complicated composition with a young woman prominent in foreground looking and walking directly toward photographer while husband of couple reaches out for hand of young son walking in front of woman

72 woman with attractive legs existing taxi cab amidst crowded sidewalk

73 close up of tall slender attractive young woman walking towards photographer, falling out of tilted lower right of frame, contrast to two older women in upper left of frame

74 interesting composition featuring seductive woman talking on phone in booth, door open within a coffee shop, clearly communicates a statement of the age

75 incredible composition of 8 people seated on a long bench, a myriad of interpersonal actions, a fascinating study of the time

76 close-up of a young woman and her mother leaning against a limestone building looking at another woman over whose shoulder the photo was taken, expressions of gravity

77 interesting composition of one woman seated on a park wall, another below, and a few others nearby including just the long legs of a man encased in sharply pleated slacks standing above a vertical member of the wall which along with the three prominent decorative circles carved into the wall below lending a symbolic sexual nature to the photo: man, woman

78 close-up body length portrait of young woman in knitted mini-skirt dress in elevator, her glance to the side ignoring the obvious presence of the photo-voyeur

79 attractive young woman walking with haste and intention through the frame from left to right, to admiring suited men walking on the sidewalk behind, woman’s pointed breasts create horizontal geometric intersection with long vertical legs of men

80 fascinating image abounding with irony of young woman head thrown back in laughter in front of window of store featuring a half-height headless mannequin in a suit, woman holding the phallus shaped cone of what remains of an ice cream cone with her upright index finger unintentionally pointed back to the mannequin, communicates the cheerful emasculation of a man by a woman

81 dark, dreary image of ferry slicing through image diagonally towards Manhattan island, doomsday feel

82 woman with cigarette dangling from mouth traveling by train with two children, woman looking into purse, kids looking out windows

83 front half of 58/59 Cadillac convertible entering foreground of frame left to right, man with mouth agape seems to be singing with gusto and pleasure, straight forward pressing motion of car could symbolize phallus pointed toward what would be woman’s mid-section if symbolized by two breast-shaped arches in background

84 by careful composition a lone businessman is featured walking towards the camera carrying luggage outside airport terminal amidst others awaiting the arrival of buses

85 a couple sitting close together in intimate conversation pushed into the corner of a subway car, observed by young man head turned over shoulder, another man uninterested absorbed in reading paper, composition leads eye through triangle of three parties

86 4-5 people at total ease taking for granted their travel in a first-class train compartment

87 59 Cadillac Eldorado parked momentarily for a passenger to exit situated within a cold, foggy, slushy street with its massive fins aglow with bright tail lights and menacing rear grill communicating an evil, other-worldly threat, composition breathes life into an otherwise dull evening scene

88 composition ordered by geometric straight vertical lines of tall floor to ceiling windows in an air terminal contrasted with sweeping curving rails of a stairway in the left of the frame, woman climbing stairs—moving up in her world while looking down upon others below

89 at first glance a seemingly uninteresting composition, further inspection yanks the eye to the formation of a heavy cross/plus sign on the far right edge of the frame with the tile pattern of the wall behind mimicking a large symbolic face looking down upon several men who themselves are looking further down in a terminal of Union Station, American flag hangs vertically down high wall with its long vertical stripes paralleling those of large windows to its left and right

90 a diagonal line of briefcase-carrying business man promenading across the wet tarmac of an airport headed toward an awaiting shuttle helicopter with its door agape ready to suck these denizens into the future

91 a remarkable composition of dozens of passengers standing on the rear deck of a ferry headed towards Manhattan, passengers looking left and right framing the central figures of a well-dressed couple separated narrowly by a vertical beam

92 a man embracing a woman from behind—tender yet dominating—within a minimalist setting

93 man and woman dressed in black-tie seated at small table with cocktails covering its white cloth, deep in conversation, the man speaking while the woman gazes in objection

94 busy sidewalk scene dominated by young working-class couple arm in arm walking looking ahead unsmiling communicating concern for where they are going in the moment and in their future

95 dark image taken out bus window which frames young couple riding two-up on a scooter paralleling the motion and direction of the bus, couple looking at the bus, communicates travel, shared movement towards a goal

96 close-up of couple walking just past photographer, man’s eyebrows furrowed with head bowed like charging bull, his arm limply pushed through the crook in woman’s arm—holding on in a way as to not protect but in taking for granted, woman’s questioning/intentional gaze ever so slightly off the camera’s and towards photographers face to the left

97 white couple on left leaning against building, close together and intimate yet with furtive/fearful looks as if the photographer caught them doing something they should be, African American man walking into far right of scene gazing at couple, rubbernecking to see what they are up to

98 couple close together and talking to one another with their backs to an animal cage at the zoo, bright white wolf walking directly towards them perpendicular to the strong vertical lines of the bars on the cage, communicates that ever-present danger always lurks within the reach of the union of couples

99 complicated layered composition requiring careful viewing, very busy sidewalk in front of store window surrounded by hustle and bustle, right foreground of image features strong vertical presence of young man looking down desultorily, middle foreground a layer removed stands a man with his hands in his pockets looking in earnest towards something unseen, another layer back a couple with the man pulling away from the woman whose hand he holds to glance into the window, couple wearing sandals in contrast to shiny black shoes of others

100 couple in foreground of sidewalk scene striding down street bedecked with sunglasses, the man looking directly in front with his arm around the woman’s neck, the woman’s neck bent to look directly at man’s face, could communicate that the man is sure of their direction together yet the woman is not simply following in unquestioning obedience

101 middle-aged wealthy couple strolling arm in arm down empty sidewalk, man smiling in conversation, woman looking in agreement, communicates strolling carelessly into the future with no fear and great expectation

102 young couple standing close together with their backs leaning against the stonework of a park monument, man whispering into woman’s ear, woman glancing upward with an expression of happy surprise

103 man in phone booth with right arm pressed against glass and gleeful expression, communicates pressing forward into happy times

104 ticker tape parade, man’s back to camera is prominent figure, streamers overhead frame him in circle

105 busy beach scene of 15 or more frolicking in surf, various individuals looking at another creates interaction and interest

106 several people in hotel entranceway, a little girl pushing open a glass door observed by a woman in dark sunglasses on far left edge of frame, two couples in conversation in the center of image, just another day with the woman in the sunglasses passing the time looking at the little girl

107 crowd seated in baseball stadium, father leaning into young girl and pointing at something in the distance, one generation leading/teaching another

108 five figures walking diagonally across image, braving snow storm downtown, one woman walking dog, another woman’s umbrella tilted forward perpendicular to axis of moving people

109 two businessmen in empty airport lounge area, both staring into camera with looks questioning why photo is being taken

110 unimpressive image of beauty queen walking down sidewalk, her body mostly hidden behind yards of loose fabric held by hidden man next to her

111 sidewalk filled with men carrying boxes, pulling luggage, central man has briefcase casually draped behind shoulder while talking to another, casualness in the midst of order

112 mob of people moving down sidewalk into frame, surrounded by blowing papers, likely a rally

113 crowd of excited waving women on sidewalk constrained behind police barriers, man in foreground

looking toward their reason for excitement with a look of bewilderment

114 dark sidewalk scene with a midget strolling in the street towards camera, approaching woman no less strange looking dressed in nickers with high socks, pillbox hat and carrying another hat box, communicates that the strange are mimicked in life

115 busy sidewalk scene with three nuns in foreground strolling towards photographer

116 young people coming and going on sidewalk, center figure of tall thin boy eating ice cream cone and walking with cane

117 very crowded sidewalk layered with people watching a parade, grandfather in foreground holding young girl in his arms, she looking directly into the camera with a look of quiet, stern, acceptance, a young boy just behind grandfather his hand raised to his cap as if in salute

118 two young boys on right side of image standing on a scale checking their combined weight, observed by row of empty bathroom sinks on left side of image, composition gives life to inanimate sinks

119 two young boys climbing up and straddling low wall in a park full of leafless trees, as if they are climbing their way into the natural world

120 winter scene of young mother pushing two year old in stroller, three year old hanging on to its side, all stopped before a fire in a barrel on the sidewalk, each with a different look on their faces, another woman in the distance across the street looking at them

121 back of worker using squeegee on window of aquarium with small whale looking back at him, asks question, who’s behind the glass?

122 two dogs walking down sidewalk, one on a leash held in the mouth of the other

123 old man with tossing food with an alley-oop into the cage of a grizzly bear

124 only the arm of a father reaching into the frame to point out a small monkey behind glass staring back young son

125 city roof composition with small figure of man looking down directly at sea lion gazing up at him

126 a lone orangutan in a minimalist/no context environment slouched on ground and staring directly into camera, a look of puzzled intelligence on face, communicates feel that humans aren’t alone

127 long trunk of elephant entering left side of frame reaching 2/3 of way across image to man’s hand reaching toward it to drop peanuts into its trunk

128 just the lower teeth of a European brown bear biting the sign on its cage announcing its species

129 communicative interaction between diagonally opposed man and hippopotamus

130 two men in park with two great danes, one humping the front of the other sniffing its genitals, perhaps homosexuality in animal world

131 close up of a circle of five adults surrounding a large dog standing on its hind legs looking bewildered into the camera

132 solitary suited man in elevator positioned in front of floor buttons looking back over his shoulder at photographer, a look of “I know what you’re doing” on his face (there is no where that Winogrand does not take photos)

133 three African American men striding down sidewalk towards camera, one shouting out to someone on his left, another staring at a passing white man, communicates “hey baby, we’re in charge”

134 a nun in a black habit kneeling down on the sidewalk to help (minister to) an older woman laying on her back bloodied and bruised, passerby’s some stopped so walking on all gazing down at her

135 close-up of 6-7 people all looking just off camera, one with head back laughing, central figure with hand over heart, two others frowning, another smiling, communicates questioning of patriotism

136 frontal portrait of a pursed-lipped middle-aged mother walking arm in arm with a son on each side, one dapper, the other dull

137 three people falling out of the lower left of a tilted image, what seems like an African American nanny walking two young white girls, one looking over shoulder at camera, an expression of “why?” on her face

138 solitary elderly African American man centered in frame reaching out hand to accept coins from just the arm of a white man reaching towards his outstretched arm (an interesting pairing with 127)

139 two men about to step off sidewalk to cross street with busy traffic, one in back with head down eyes forward with intent, the other in foreground with a stoic frown of intent—the worries of the world on his face

140 three college-aged boys in the background layer playing frisbee, one caught in mid-air to catch frisbee, another looking at the camera, all taken in by two very attractive young women leaning against wall

141 city scene of drizzly day with traffic moving in the foreground to the left in front of cathedral, woman in shorts shown in the background running in front of church in a parallel direction

142 women walking through empty park square, two in foreground smoking, two in background strolling towards them looking at two in front

143 idyllic park scene of late 60s college-aged couples lounging in grass of wooded park, girl standing in foreground dressed in tight jeans and form-fitting sweating accentuating her firm breasts, composition lends to eroticism of blossoming youth

144 unremarkable crowed scene of young couples at zoo, two men in foreground carrying young children on shoulders

145 virtually empty sidewalk in front of tortilla factory, foreground dominated by kissing couple on left with woman glancing aside into camera, another heavy-set younger girl in the center of the frame looking intensely into camera, juxtaposition of couple and girl causes eye to roam back and forth between them

146 minimalist image with scruffy man who must have been directly in front of photographer scowling and pointing finger, two other men one on far sides of frame looking at man to see what will happen

147 three suited businessman captured stepping up onto sidewalk, an airy dance of fulfilled business

148 scene with what seems two middle-aged brothers flanking father, father looking down unaware while sons glance warily at photograph, contrast of the knowing and unknowing walk through life

149 close-up of crowd of mostly middle-aged people moving with energy headlong into the frame, eye is drawn to figure in center with long hair and prominent cross hanging from bag, perhaps a hippie from the Jesus Movement of the time making his way through crowds of lost souls

150 very attractive well-dressed inter-racial couple front and center in frame carrying monkeys dressed for the cool weather, couples gaze serious, intent on their direction in life ironies aside challenging viewer to dare to question their family

A Student of America

151 image split in half, a two-year old girl walking out of a dark garage down the driveway towards a tricycle fallen on its side, the right half a wide distant desert mountainous scene, all overshadowed by storm clouds, communicates ominous modernity waddling like a toddler into nature’s immensity

152 56 Belair 4-door sedan driving right to left through the immediate foreground out of a deep black background, two young children faces pressed against the smudged side window looking forward and to their left, communicates an escape from the darkness into an unknown future

153 enlarged shadow of a parked car in the foreground in juxtaposition to a similar shaped rocky hillside (castle rock) behind, communicates a foreshadowing of modernity, transportation, technology mimicking and overcoming nature

154 diagonal composition with baby in diapers crawling upon the bare floor of a dowdy living room his gaze transfixed upon the actors on the screen of a George Jetson-like 50s black and white TV on a wheeled stand, communicates the infancy of technological change rolling across the living rooms of America capturing up its infants in a coming whirlwind of change

155 handsome beatnik driver with full beard, sunglasses, and slicked-back hair driving across the foreground of the frame in a flashy convertible with the sun gleaming of the pillar of its windshield, a large bowed crane its tentacle pointing in parallel to the car’s movement and the bridge abutments in the middle ground, communicates the inevitable construction of a new flashy lifestyle upon the cultural landscape

156 ten people seated in the background against the sheer wall of a modernist hotel lobby with stacks of luggage lined up diagonally reaching toward an unseen doorway, communicates a new society on the move, questions where they are all going

157 youngish middle-aged couple walking across a diagonal crosswalk out of a casino directly towards the photographer, the man and woman’s hands close but not touching, the woman dressed in short shorts revealing bare long legs, her breasts pushed up and pressed forward in a cone shaped bra which magnetically attracts the the eye of the viewer to the exclusion of the rest of the photo’s visual elements

158 a pastoral scene shot through a car’s windshield, two roads in distance create an interesting composition, possibly sexually suggestive

159 dreary image of two men, one seated on a suitcase on the side of a dusty road, clearly shot from passing car

160 uninteresting image shot from car of another car packed with children filing up with gas

161 photo through car’s windshield of three young women in two-piece bathing suits walking away from camera, large Chris Craft boat perpendicular to their path

162 middle-aged man and woman riding an old Indian motorcycle past cornfields, shot through window of passing car, shadow of couple in miniature upon grassy berm

163 boy who appears to have fallen on sidewalk outside of suburban home

164 photo of cow crossing a road shot through windshield

165 horse fallen on rider in rodeo with rope still attached to cow’s back leg

166 distant scene of men playing baseball in an open field

167 passengers departing a Juarez bus at terminal walking in diagonal line away from camera and heading in direction of arrow sign

168 a study in contrast with a tall attractive woman with a bee-hive hairdo striding down sidewalk face forward with energy as opposed to another woman in front of her dressed dowdy and walking head down with little energy

169 woman alone on sidewalk in front of businesses her elbows held high to shield her from the sunlit scene to which she looks

170 teenage girl adjusting her hair having exited a late 50’s Cadillac holding three other teens parked on beach overlooking vast sea

171 vertically layered composition of multiple parking decks of a parking garage, car streaming down road in foreground

172 photo of kidney-shaped swimming pool shot from high above, woman in center appears as if floating in air above water

173 man with a taped broken nose looking with derision at the woman passenger in the convertible he is driving, curved arrow on street pointing towards them and their interaction

174 political operatives huddled in conversation at convention

175 close up of woman with wry smile at camera on crowded convention floor

176 short telephoto lens used to focus viewer on man holding chin up with fingers staring vacantly in midst of convention crowd with Bobby Kennedy barely visible on lower left of frame

177 man in white tux seated at table behind candelabra mouth agape and vacant stare in contrast to three men in black suits standing to his left engaged in animated conversation

178 extreme close-up of a man and two women layered in an elevator, man staring in sunglasses, woman in rear center with head turned up and sunglasses on forehead with vain expression, woman on right out of focus with eyes skewed to right and mouth open in laugh, communicates the vagaries of life

179 extreme close-up of two women and a man layered in the frame all staring at something to their right

180 triangular composition of two men staring at attractive woman at outdoor cocktail party

181 John F. Kennedy in left of frame staring at something along with African Americans surrounding him

182 three photographers shooting Adlai Stevenson at podium, operative seated at table in right of frame with whimsical expression seemingly reveling in the moment

183 complex layered composition using shallow depth of field to highlight three convention goers in conversation, another staring at them, another in lower right of frame with headed cocked over shoulder guardedly looking into camera

184 useless image

185 close-up of waitress in front of frame with out of focus diners seated at counter behind

186 young boy wearing Mickey Mouse ears staring at camera while walking behind mother carrying camera at cemetery

187 strong vertical composition of husband with children at his side holding sign welcoming wife, tall pillars

188 woman standing in drive of modern suburban home (of the time) staring at a 58 Belair convertible—a work of art—parked alone in darkened garage

189 boy scouts and scoutmaster seated at restaurant table, a Brownie box camera under the chair of the nearest boy who has a transistor radio propped up before him on the table, scoutmaster holding what looks to be a leather light meter case

190 empty table covered with empty food baskets and four white chairs arranged outside plate glass window decorated with cutouts of shakes, composition brings table and chairs to life

191 early 60s two-door Chevelle parked in front of sign for Oldsmobile dealership in front of cowboy cafe

192 vertical image of an attractive young woman with her back turned to the camera and her head turned over her shoulder to look at the camera, five poles create interesting juxtaposition and composition that reinforce her sexuality

193 a decisive moment capture of a tall thin cowboy crossing a city street, his body stepping up onto a curb is so loose and free that he looks like a floppy marionette

194 interior of a grocery store with carts lined up at checkout counter, infant perched in center cart as if he will be rung up like the groceries in the other carts

195 close up of a passing young couple both wearing sunglasses driving a British convertible sports car down an otherwise empty area

196 young family in a gift shop near the Redwoods of Northern California, young boy staring at camera interacting with photographer while mother and father and brother are occupied elsewhere

197 scene at state fair with young boy on left staring at woman staring back and holding a silhouette picture seated in the center, interaction between two in midst of busyness around them

198 two middle-aged couples walking through empt scene

199 extreme close-up of the backside of a man within a store holding out his right towards a man walking toward him, another female-looking hand to his left outstretched as well

200 young son accompany father to cemetery, father pointing to statues titled “The Mystery of Life”

201 scene framed through passenger window of car of two young boys with guns, one with a confederate soldier hat pointing to the right with a rifle, the other with a floppy hat pointing to the left with a pistol

202 a mother and six children crammed into a passing VW bug convertible, most staring at photographer

203 selective focus highlighting mother in curlers walking through crowded airport, young girl and woman beside her staring at her, mother’s hand raised and expression on her face communicate “eh, so what?”

204 underwater scene of woman with flippers swimming alongside pig

205 George Wallace exiting limousine at Texas State Fair, reportage—no interest

206 crowded plaza at state fair, two women staring at camera riding by on back of golf cart, huge statue of Texan with puffed out chest looming over all

207 marine in full dress uniform standing solemnly at attention next to American flag on podium, VFW dressed older man below podium laughing at young man walking by, communicates, though not purposely, absurdity of soldiering

208 nine teenage boys all dressed in white shirts standing in front of bleachers, looks of anticipation staring at something on the field, communicates promise of the future

209 rodeo infield with three cowboys squatting on their haunches, another in the background, paralleling the posture of three brahma bulls near them

210 close-up of a tourist couple examining photos of the building from which Kennedy was shot, camera in hand on Dealey Plaza, disturbing sensationalism

211 extreme close-up of an unconcerned young man with fedora his lips inches away from contact with those of a black bull staring in fear at the camera

212 air force helicopter hovering over stadium field at night, basket swinging below, reportage at best, no interest

213 father and son along with security guard photographed through glass window, all looking at jewelry on display, young boy mouth agape with head and eyes tilted upward in astonishment

214 scene of crowd at fair, composition and selective focus highlight 5-6 year old girl held aloft by father

215 ocean lapping upon beach with pick-up trucked backed up to water, a few workers bent over sand, large flying fish—perhaps a kite suspended just waterline

216 well-dressed woman in white gown exiting exotic black sports car, a moment in time, but no interest

217 businessman at desk leaning at odd angle

218 excellent composition with woman floating in hotel pool on back, breasts prominent, with legs of another woman sticking straight out of water nearby, late 50s finned station wagon in back observing all

219 close-up of couple on busy street, man looking away from woman, woman looking over shoulder towards man but not directly to his face, expressions communicate disharmony, have had enough with each other

220 beachfront restaurant filled with women in two-piece bathing suits, woman with cleavage in center, prominent backside of woman walking out of right side of frame reinforces presence of four other backsides

221 two tall slender well-dressed women photographed from behind as they step up onto a sidewalk heading toward futuristic LA airport structure, tall palms parallel women’s appearance

222 image of well-dressed couples ascending a double stairway, interaction of a white woman and a black woman speaking to one another across the rail dividing one set of stairs from the other

223 mother holding the hands of her young son and daughter in center of image of a mostly empty high ceiling outdoor mall, woman looking intently at something to her left, communicates the pull of family against new consumerism

224 middle-aged man and woman relaxing on lawn chairs in backyard with no concern for a sprinkler shooting up water behind them

225 baseball player leaning over fence kissing girl, man behind smiling and watching interaction

226 seven young children seated on floor of store glued to TV set, one girl looking back at two men behind both of whom are staring at kids, at least three other people in store also staring at kids

227 fetching young woman in bikini walking towards photographer while looking down at young girl on beach below pier, composition such that her left breast is focal point of image, Buick Riviera with a sinister masculine growling grill is driving up behind the girl, all very sensual, suggestive, even woman’s shadow

228 two young boys each standing atop slides separated by grassy park, fighter jet resting on lawn is pointing at boy in foreground, communicates competition, on the verge of leaving childhood to encounter the dangers of the world, perhaps going to war

229 father and sons excitedly entering baseball stadium, one boy’s glasses falling off, as usual a man nearby staring at interaction, another young boy behind laughing as he catches up

230 backsides of several tourists on a boat to view the Golden Gate Bridge, butts prominent, small boy glaring at camera with sad countenance as if he’s left out of the adult club

231 plump woman in sundress and sunglasses walking on beach out of frame with backsides of another woman and a girl bent over on sand dune behind

232 diver in mid-air as he propels himself off diving board of hotel pool, at least one person watching from balcony, two other pairs of people talking to one another, communicates the energy, progressive intention of the one in the midst of the calm interaction of others

233 image out train window looking across open desert to another train carrying several tanks, communicates headlong thrust to war

234 sailor with glum look as others in photo walking past NY library, communicates depression, futility of Vietnam War

235 five flags flying over busy sidewalk scene with people exiting buses

236 minimalist scene of Air Force Academy minimalist architecture with two lonely soldiers walking away from camera amidst wide open space, questions military-industrial complex

237 veterans milling about outside downtown building giving no attention veteran with no legs crawling on sidewalk nearby

238 woman in curlers holding young boy watching parade marching at Air Force Academy with huge open space behind, communicates the ongoing military conquest in the face of the ordinary

239 soldier saying goodbye to woman at airport, whispering in her ear, her look one of questioning and concern

240 image of long dark Eldorado Caddilac with blond woman and child passenger paralleling long white linear buildings

241 rainy street crossing with war-time quotes on construction site

242 young boy seated against wall next to restrooms in spacious airport lobby, holding onto wall waiting mother to exit

243 father staring at camera as he walks by men’s store window display carrying two babies

244 man wearing military cap with bandaged ear sitting at bar of diner being served coffee, two young me in foreground paying him no attention, communicates lack of care on part of public for war

245 three attractive women lined up behind registration table, all with bouffant hairdos, two with considerable cleavage, “register here” sign parallel to center woman’s cleavage draws eye to the obvious

246 five young teenage girls with blankets on stretch of sandy beach behind barbwire fence

247 two businessmen in foreground of cold rainy sidewalk scene, man on right has large white square bandage on cheek, diagonal to that is the square white package held by the other, communicates we all carry our burdens

248 woman with expression of hopeful concern dressed in wool cape-like coat carrying a flower walking towards photographer, man to her right looking at her

249 composition of diagonal metal and glass doors behind which is a man dressed in white facing away

250 three tall, lanky teenage girl waitresses lined up diagonally to reinforce their seductive power

251 seven children pictured in park with two medieval stocks present, six kids looking at lower stock, one kid staring up at higher one

252 woman in nightgown and curlers hanging laundry in crowded housing area watched by young girl in nightshirt, convertible sports car just visible in far right of frame, diagonal composition leads eye down clothesline to woman to girl, communicates the inevitability of a woman’s life of housework

253 soldier greeted by son on tarmac as he departs airplane

254 fully clothed couple embracing on sandy beach

255 scene in airport lobby contrasting old white woman being pushed in wheelchair by African American caregiver with standing hipster looking white young couple awaiting flight

256 college-aged couple embrace in kiss leaning against tree, on other side of tree is twin-looking coed looking the other way, man in lower right corner looking at couple, communicates disparity of love and attention

257 thee attractive women parading down sunlit sidewalk paying no attention to the young man slumped over in a wheelchair that they are about to pass

258 Lyndon Johnson and coterie on tarmac in front of plane, Johnson looking at photographer, others looking at him

259 audience at prize fight, used flash, one man head back laughing, another staring intently at camera

260 cameramen at press conference, image layered by mirror, reporter with hand outstretched like asking what/why?

261 crowd on bleachers at space center, all standing taking photos of sky, woman in front taking photo of photographer

262 image centered on beautiful blond woman dancing, man next to her falling out of frame with wry, amused expression communicating “yeah, I can see why you’re interested”

263 couple in foreground, woman in mink coat with hand raised and finger pointing up, man with hand gesture, trying to attract the attention of someone subservient, communicates the wealthy calling upon/expecting the assistance of the not so wealthy

264 Muhammad Ali confidently speaking to reporters at press conference, others surrounding him looking at him with admiration, white man kneeling behind him laughing

265 Norman Mailer bent over podium speaking to woman questioning him

266 young couple dancing with woman with extreme cleavage the focal point, man dressed in tux staring at her breasts with an expression of appreciation/enjoyment, psychedelic wallpaper behind, composition accentuates woman’s breasts giving the feeling that they are about to fall out of her dress

267 close-up of packed crowd at women’s liberation march, woman with hands raised and expression of bewilderment being interviewed by seemingly hostile reporter

268 older couple approaching camera on mostly empty sidewalk, man dressed in white tux, woman dressed in long paisley dress with strange flowered hair piece and carrying a fluffy white dog as if its just another typical day

269 exuberant crowd in airport terminal, all engaged in excited conversation

270 minimalist image of four flight attendants and to captains seated on bench against wall in empty area of airport, communicates the loneliness of the experts awaiting the masses on whom to ply their expertise

271 passengers with luggage leaving airport, mundaneness

272 young families with children gathered by the windows of an airport terminal, communicates that flying has become attainable to the middle-class

273 passengers awaiting plane seated at bar, communicates commonness of the experience

274 three nuns in garb seated at table in airport diner, communicates flying is for everyone

275 captain walking past virtually empty information counter in airport, communicates simplicity of flying

276 two middle-aged women loading luggage into convertible outside of airport

277 two men with young children looking out window of airport terminal as if captivated by the work of loading luggage onto a huge plane, communicates amazement and grandeur of new flight

278 interesting composition in window-lined hallway above a road, to military men advancing with haste toward camera, a military man with arm around wife strolling away from camera, a lone woman to the right of the frame peering past advancing men probably awaiting arrival of someone, communicates comings and goings, different levels of experience and expectation

279 crowds of all sorts of people awaiting flights seated on benches in modern airport terminal

280 crowd of anti-war demonstrators holding hands and signs aloft including cross with Jesus hanging

281 Nixon, Agnew, and astronauts lined up before press photographers in ballroom, communicates the bestowing of stardom on space travelers: their is flight, and then their is f l i g h t

282 ebullient Nelson Rockefeller speaking from podium surrounded by admiring lieutenants

283 nude male protestor leading crowd in Central Park

284 bloodied bespectacled young demonstrator advancing toward camera, younger man on his left holding his lip as if a baby in fear

285 crowded chaotic scene tending towards violence of hard-hatted demonstrators on trash-ladened New York street, communicates anger of the working class

286 close-up of crowded hard-hat rally with central figure screaming in anger at reporter’s thrust-forth microphone

287 close-up of hip young people in park, a young couple embraced in foreground, a phallus-like steeple rising in the background directly between them, communicates sensuality of young love displayed publicly

288 scene in open park with father and mother accompanied by two young boys wearing cowboy hats all staring at young hipsters lounging in grass before them, communicates lack of understanding of one generation not much older than the next

289 medics dressed in white coats with red cross symbols tending to injured demonstrator, one way street sign in background reinforces cross symbols and ironically questions religion’s claim

290 thousands of demonstrators lying on backs upon lawn of Central Park staring at balloon-filled sky, communicates that their message is lifting off, gaining elevation

291 extreme close-up of two college-aged boys flanking a young woman in park, two men directly behind with ice cream bars shoved in their mouths

292 large crowd of mostly men with central figure a fashionably dressed beautiful woman with large breasts on display, various people with differing facial expressions staring/examining her breasts

293 close-up of dancers young and old doing the twist in museum atrium, communicates a segment or society dancing away the day with no concern for issues of the time

294 Joe Frazier dressed in black suit and boots and white hat and cape advancing toward camera amidst fans, communicates the royalty of the famous and their expectation of and insistence upon it

295 out of focus man with arm raised in foreground with thousands below in background of outdoor New Year’s celebration

296 crowd of hip Yale students dancing outdoors upon common, communicates rarified stratus of society living above it all including the deadly last days of the Vietnam War

297 compacted frame full of violent hard-hat demonstrators

298 scene of the wealthy dressed in black-tie dancing away the night with no concerns

299 well-dressed and groomed man crossing sidewalk

300 middle-aged couple descending outdoor stairway, strong circular compositional elements

301 woman peering out passenger seat window of car

302 kindergarteners climbing chain-link fence, tilted horizon

303 baby seated in high chair at diner table facing camera, looking directly into camera with confused expression, highlights in eyes indicate may have used flash

304 young boy with basketball on sidewalk in suburban setting devoid of others

305 department store Santa Claus holding baby boy while mother watches

306 wonderful lighting of family having their portrait taken (by another photographer), standing just below statue of two angels, communicates the wonder and beauty of family

307 three hip teenagers in diner, man and woman staring at each other across table while other boy is standing and looking directly at camera with harsh expression, boy wearing T-shirt with image of naked female breasts, communicates questioning of gender by the young in the early 70s

308 close-up of woman wearing floppy hat in center of frame looking down

309 image of Mickey Rooney accepting Academy Award, arms of man holding a script and pen just visible in right side of frame, communicates that such events had become heavily scripted

310 a dozen or more bare-chested men moving through frame on a flatbed trailer with the sign “gents” under a garland of balloons

311 focus of image is provocative young couple roller skating down boardwalk on Venice Beach, he has clown make-up on face, she is dressed in a skimpy (for the time) string bikini, others stopped in their tracks watching them skate by

312 two young burlesque dancers with seductive expressions on parade float

313 two rodeo cowboys on arena ground trying to control bucking horse which is looking directly at camera with fearful expression, slow shutter speed and flash blurs horse resulting in feeling of movement

314 auctioneer shouting (looks angry) at cattle auction

315 topless woman dancer in theatre, another photographer with Leica M3 preparing to photograph her as well and young African American staring at her, others present have no interest

316 two bathing-suited beauties waving to crowd from parade float

317 bare chested young man drinking can of beer with arms around shoulders of two bikini-clad women, one woman and the young man behind her looking intensely at camera, great crowd behind

318 bull chasing clown at rodeo, powerful flash highlights intense eyes of both looking at one another

319 wide angle view of football game play with players and umpires all moving chaotically in different directions

320 indescribable bland scene of parked cars in front of office buildings

321 bartender behind outdoor table, cat staring at him

322 frame centered on businessman walking briskly down sidewalk in contrast to others more stationary

323 woman running carnival game, posture emulates stuffed dogs in booth surrounding her

324 close-up of three elderly people inside car, all looking at intrusive photographer (who must have been only inches away from the car)

325 frame filled with three young women with arms around each other’s shoulders, different gay expressions on each in contrast to sombre expression on woman to their right

326 pony running through field outside of rodeo stadium with a sign’s arrow pointing: “Contestants & Trailer”

327 close-up contrasting young chubby boy and his lamb at 4H fair competition

328 three young elephants drinking from 55 gallon barrel

329 three teenagers at fair grounds, flower being pinned on one girl who is staring contemptuously at camera

330 close-up of young couple, man with camera to face taking photo, girlfriend looking askance with an expression communicating disaffection

331 close-up of father and two young daughters, father looking into billfold with concerned expression, both girls looking disgruntled at camera

332 elderly couple strolling beach in Florida

333 close-up of well-dressed middle-age African American woman standing with line of white people behind her

334 very well-dressed mother and three daughters standing outside market

335 close-up of man and wife and son gazing off back deck of cruise boat in San Francisco Bay

336 tall lanky young hippie woman standing holding young girl, cityscape behind, trash-strewn street, hopeless look on woman’s face, sign on storefront behind: saving farm, one-way street sign and loop highway sign above

337 middle-aged woman in short shorts sitting on folding chair in front of suburban home, horizon titled, shot from below, woman looking down into camera

338 woman in white dress and shoes walking towards city street from parking garage, seems to be carrying large photo/poster

339 young woman with foot up on bench adjusting hosiery in front of adult bookstore, horizon tilted seeming to propel woman towards store

340 mother seated between sidewalk and brick apartment building, two young girls looking up at building with sign: furnished apartment, trash strewn lot next to building with tall thin palm trees reaching towards the bright sunny sky

341 two very attractive flight attendants intently strolling up ramp into airport terminal contrasted with two middle-aged women travelers standing talking and relaxed leaning against rail

342 two cowboy dressed men with bags in hand walking towards airplanes on air field

343 close-up of the backside of one man with the other looking over his shoulder out of the frame, exhibiters at a convention

344 two well-to-do couples mostly dressed in white exiting glamorous home, walking with head down toward camera

345 police and fireman helping man with bloodied face

346 six or so fit young people on beach, on man reaching across front of extremely attractive woman in bikini towards VIP sign at her waist

347 young family in Mexican garb, two young boys looking at camera, wife and older son staring amusedly off to their left at father barely visible in frame dressed in polo shirt and slacks

348 Art Laboe with two young women as he accepts star

349 woman head down walking toward camera, composition focuses eye on nipple protruding, suggestive cactus directly behind her

350 college-aged hippie woman with back to camera looking down, man in grimy T-shirt walking by and staring at her backside

351 young Drew Barrymore at Academy Awards

352 three businessmen walking towards camera, man on left with artificial claw arm, Fotomat sign behind

353 white man and African American man caught for a moment standing near one another but not looking at one another, suburban city buildings behind, two men of two races moving in different directions

354 young African American family, celebrating teenage daughter’s coming of age

355 stylishly dressed middle-aged couple walking on sidewalk in Beverly Hills shopping district, heads turned staring at something to their left

356 close-up of contestants in a Texas beauty contest

357 close-up of people on street, several looking at camera suspiciously

358 two cranky businessmen crossing street looking at camera

359 selective focus on one man on sidewalk amidst crowd, staring warily at camera

360 selective focus on one woman on sidewalk amidst crowd, concerned/fearful expression

361 selective focus on one man on sidewalk amidst crowd, concerned/fearful expression

362 close-up of five business-dressed people talking gayly

363 elective focus on three women on sidewalk amidst crowd, staring warily at camera

364 reflection of two businessmen in window, concerned faces in reflection (looks like a stock photo)

365 woman (likely a prostitute) sitting in foreground with beach and beachgoers in the background

366 lone businessman walking towards camera with concerned expression, isolated environment communicates the difficulty of having to go it alone

367 lone woman walking towards camera in virtually empty street scene, concerned expression

368 two people isolated, both with troubled expressions

369 young hispanic couple embracing on sidewalk outside store, very troubled expressions

370 young shirtless man framed by car window while passing, concerned expression

371 four elderly people, two women sitting on bench, one looking concernedly at old man in act of sitting, depressing

372 isolated image of woman with look of expectation, tilted horizon parallel with her leaning posture

373 close-up of made-up actress with mouth agape walking out of right side of frame

374 three young women each with wild sunglasses and troubled expressions

375 woman walking down aisle of bus towards camera, expression denotes anger at having photo taken, younger man with daughter seated staring at camera with untroubled expression

376 close-up of teenage boy leaning in to kiss girl

377 overhead image looking down on stairway, old man pulling himself up by the railing on the left, young couple seated on right looking up with glee

378 elderly man in center of frame seated on easy chair mouth open asleep, middle-aged couple in room look like they’ve reached a place of helplessness/hopelessness

379 older man walking towards camera coffee cup in hand, military jets behind, goofy expression

380 lone young boy seated holding 4’ pole upright parallel to telephone pole and buildings, horizon tilted

381 frame centered on older and younger woman walking on empty sidewalk, droll expressions

382 middle-aged couple in lower right corner of unusual composition, seated at small table in airport restaurant overlooking plane on tarmac, sorrowful expressions

383 older man dressed in hat and overcoat crossing nearly empty street, head bowed, scornful expression, communicates great loneliness and futility

384 attractive tall windswept woman having just crossed street, her head turned sharply over her right shoulder, her expression forlorn, turn signs adjacent to her

385 woman seated on trunk of car next to chain-link fence, looking to left of camera with expression of hopelessness, T-shirt reads “Mayday Productions”

386 smartly-dressed bearded man walking toward camera, looking to his lower left, deeply troubled expression

387 close-up of society woman, gazing at camera with bored “is that all you’ve got” expression

388 marchers coming down street on Day of the Dead parade

389 Porsche car driving away from camera in foreground, woman lying in gutter in background, no one on sidewalk in front of Denny’s paying any attention to her

390 aerial view of block after of block of houses approaching ocean shore with power plant stacks centered on diagonal beach horizon, early dystopian feeling

391 close-up of family with five children, confusing that only one is looking at camera, all expressions dower, one child framed within extended arm and elbow of another

392 three men walking side by side down sidewalk just off axis to camera, none looking at camera, all with expressions communicating no delight in what they are doing

393 older man walking out of frame looking back at camera with downtrodden expression, horizon tilted lends tension to his intense look

394 close-up of middle-aged man dressed in suit with angry, sour look on face in foreground, immediately behind is tightly packed crowd of people many of whom are children, perhaps a teacher/principal taking kids on field trip in city

395 crowd in bleachers all looking up and to their left at something in sky, a lone woman in the crowd looking with interest at camera

396 two women dancing merrily on causeway

397 close-up of couple with dour expressions somehow not looking at camera, man has sunglasses falling off forehead over his glasses

398 diagonal line of people on bus bench, one young girl incongruous

399 man dressed in middle-class dress drag carrying plate of food down empty street, fairgrounds behind

My Opinions

- these are photographs out of the culture of my childhood

- at his best, his street images are amazing in their energy, irony, wit, sensualness, confrontational

- many other images, in which he is simply documenting everyday life, are mundane, meaningless snapshots to me

- Rubinfien probably reads more meaning, seen from a perspective years later, into Winogrand’s mundane images. I doubt Winogrand had a conscious, well-developed plan to convey specific meanings. Rather I believe, he was a shooter, an obsessed observer of the public, unable to exist apart from his roaming and photographing. Rubinfien’s seeking to force meaning upon Winogrand’s existence is anthropomorphic. (Rubinfien denies this in the first sentences of p. 42)

- how Winogrand is able to compositionally highlight women’s breasts to the exclusion of all else in a frame is uncanny

- I have no interest in his images from the Democratic National Convention

- I find little interest in the posthumous images, some irony, many bland

- early images and very late evoke emotional response, middle years not so

Questions

~ Did Winogrand purposely choose to take certain photos in order to communicate specific topics or did he simply wander the street compulsively snapping photos consciously unconcerned with a topic? Was he, regardless of what he said, simply a documentarian, lucky to have captured many ironic visuals?

~ Is his harsh criticism, that photographs have no narrative and communicate no meaning, his way of hiding behind the fact that he had no construct to explain—even to himself—what he was doing, the very purpose of his life?

~ Were Winogrand and Andy Warhol floating side by side on the same slipstream of culture and consciousness through the 60s?

Thoughts on Photography

“Szarkowski hoped that photography might be perceived not as a second-class art or an overrated trade but as having the persisting value of the best music, architecture, and writing. To achieve this he had to renounce the heroic claims photographers often made with regard to their moral mission or metaphysical vision. Insisting that photographs could only do what photographs could do, that what they said was forever incomplete and tentative, he would try on the limited but newly honest basis to find in them a seriousness and beauty that had been overlooked. He would, for example, show how they told almost nothing of what happened before or might happen next, that they were, precariously credible as to what was happening now, and that this meant that the most important aspect of a picture was not the thing it described, which had no absolute meaning, but how that thing was subjectively presented… He was no ally of any avant-garde; he championed photographs that, though they seemed a clear glass through which one saw the world plain, were in fact a magical glass, which tinted the world with knowledge, questions, and heart of the person who made it.” (see further paragraphs through p. 33)

Garry Winogrand, Leo Rubinfien, Down from the Bronx, p. 32

“Where their predecessors had aimed, Szarkowski said, to show ‘what was wrong with the world, and persuade their fellows to change it,’ these three artists (Winogrand, Arbus, Friedlander; New Documents Show, MOMA) wanted ‘not to reform life but to know it.’”

Garry Winogrand, Leo Rubinfien, Down from the Bronx, p. 35

“Even in the direst years, he mostly photographed tiny interactions on unexceptional streets, how people were dispersed in space, their glances and gestures and small extravagances of costume, all details, all trivial.”

Garry Winogrand, Leo Rubinfien, Down from the Bronx, p. 39

“‘[Photography] is not cute cats, not touchdowns, nor nudes; motherhood; arrangements of manufacturers’ products,’ Evans wrote. ‘Under no circumstance is it anything ever anywhere near a beach. It is prime vision combined with quality of feeling, no less.’”

“Dan Weiner suggested that, since a photographer was freest when he abandoned story, the city street was where he might reclaim his integrity…”

Garry Winogrand, Leo Rubinfien, Down from the Bronx, p. 44

“[In her essay On Style] Sontag passionately embraced the ‘erotics of art’ and deplored what she scorned as the philistine impulse to interpret works of art in order to make them mean something, arguing instead that we need to recover the ability simply to see and enjoy. She noted that ‘something we have learned to call form is separated off from something we have learned to call content, and that content is deemed essential,’ while form a mere accessory. ‘Real art,’ she asserted, ‘has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, comfortable [sic].’ What she demanded ‘is more attention to form in art. If excessive stress on content provokes the arrogance of interpretation, more extended and more thorough descriptions of form would silence [it].’”

Garry Winogrand, Sarah Greenough, The Mystery of the Visible, p. 395

“A photographer quickly learns, [Szarkowski] wrote, that the ‘factuality of his pictures, no matter how convincing and unarguable, was a different thing than the reality itself… The subject and the picture were not the same thing, although they would afterwards seem so.’ He emphasized the importance of the frame or edge in photographs: ‘The central act of photography, the act of choosing and eliminating, forces a concentration on the picture edge—the line that separates in from out—and on the shapes that are created by it.’”

Garry Winogrand, Sarah Greenough, The Mystery of the Visible, p. 395

“… I [Tod Papageorge] learned that photography was less a matter of refusing than accepting possibilities.”

Garry Winogrand, Tod Papageorge, In the City, p. 403