Garry Winogrand
1928–1984
Garry Winogrand, born and raised in New York, spent most of his career photographing the visual cacophony of his native city. Each day, the photographer would spend hours strolling its busy sidewalks and parks, shooting a dozen rolls of black-and-white film that captured the possibilities and anxieties of daily life in postwar America. Winogrand used a 35mm camera that enabled him to produce snapshot-like photographs quickly and freely. In 1967 curator John Szarkowski selected Winogrand, along with Diane Arbus and Lee Friedlander, for the influential exhibition New Documents at the Museum of Modern Art, noting that these artists used documentary photography for “personal ends” rather than as a tool of social reform.
New York City appears to be a candid encounter with a woman eating an ice cream cone on a sidewalk. In fact, outtakes reveal that Winogrand interacted with his subject, moving around her in order to crop out her male companion and to slyly reveal his own reflection in the store window. The photograph became the cover image for his 1975 monograph Women Are Beautiful, featuring eighty-four pictures of women in a variety of situations and places in and around New York. These images capture the styles, activities, and gestures that accompanied the second- wave feminism and sexual liberation of the era. Of his subjects, Winogrand noted: “I respond to their energies, how they stand and move their bodies and faces. In the end, the photographs are descriptions of poses or attitudes that give an idea, a hint of their energies.”
Introduction
Garry Winogrand (; January 14, 1928 – March 19, 1984) was an American street photographer, who portrayed U.S. life and its social issues in the mid-20th century. Photography curator, historian, and critic John Szarkowski called Winogrand the central photographer of his generation.
He received three Guggenheim Fellowships to work on personal projects, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and published four books during his lifetime. He was one of three photographers featured in the influential New Documents exhibition at Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1967 and had solo exhibitions there in 1969, 1977, and 1988. He supported himself by working as a freelance photojournalist and advertising photographer in the 1950s and 1960s, and taught photography in the 1970s. His photographs were featured in photography magazines including Popular Photography, Eros, Contemporary Photographer, and Photography Annual.
Critic Sean O'Hagan wrote in 2014 that in "the 1960s and 70s, he defined street photography as an attitude as well as a style – and it has laboured in his shadow ever since, so definitive are his photographs of New York"; and in 2010 that though he photographed elsewhere, "Winogrand was essentially a New York photographer: frenetic, in-your-face, arty despite himself." Phil Coomes, writing for BBC News in 2013, said "For those of us interested in street photography there are a few names that stand out and one of those is Garry Winogrand, whose pictures of New York in the 1960s are a photographic lesson in every frame."
In his lifetime Winogrand published four monographs: The Animals (1969), Women are Beautiful (1975), Public Relations (1977) and Stock Photographs: The Fort Worth Fat Stock Show and Rodeo (1980). At the time of his death his late work remained undeveloped, with about 2,500 rolls of undeveloped film, 6,500 rolls of developed but not proofed exposures, and about 3,000 rolls only realized as far as contact sheets being made.
Wikidata identifier
Q121903
Information from Wikipedia, made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License . Accessed April 24, 2025.
Introduction
Born 14 January 1928; died 19 March 1984. Winogrand began to photograph in 1945 during his military service in the United States Air Force. From 1949 to 1951 Winogrand worked as a photographer at the New School of Social Research in New York City, New York. In 1951 he worked for Pix, Inc., New York City, New York. In 1954 Winogrand worked for Brackman Associates, New York City, New York. In 1955 Winogrand took his first photographic trip across the Unites States. Winogrand travelled in Texas, Colorado, California and New York in 1964. In 1967 Winogrand photographed in England, Scotland and France. In 1977 Winogrand photographed in Greece. In 1978 Winogrand moved to Los Angeles, California. In 1983 Winogrand photographed in Denmark and Sweden.
Country of birth
United States
Roles
Artist, photographer, teacher
ULAN identifier
500014550
Names
Garry Winogrand
Information from the Getty Research Institute's Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License. Accessed April 24, 2025.
