Garry Winogrand Month begins!

Prepare for a month of awesomeness.



From wikipedia (which I find to be dubious at times, but anyway, it's the best I have to offer here):

Garry Winogrand
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Garry Winogrand
Garry Winogrand (1928, New York City – 1984) was a noted street photographer known for his portrayal of America in the early 1960s.

Winogrand studied painting at City College of New York and painting and photography at Columbia University in New York City in 1948. He also attended a photojournalism class taught by Alexey Brodovich at The New School for Social Research in New York City in 1951. Winogrand made his first notable appearance in 1963 at an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City. This show included Minor White, George Krause, Jerome Liebling and Ken Heyman.
In 1966 Winogrand exhibited at the George Eastman House in Rochester, NY with Lee Friedlander, Duane Michals, Bruce Davidson, and Danny Lyon in an exhibition entitled "Toward a Social Landscape". In 1967 he participated in the "New Documents" show at MOMA with Diane Arbus and Lee Friedlander. During his career, he received three Guggenheim Fellowship Awards (1964, 1969, and 1979) and a National Endowment of the Arts Award in 1979. Winogrand also taught courses in photography at the University of Texas at Austin and at the Art Institute of Chicago.

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

Winogrand was known for his portrayal of America in the early 1960s and his interest in social issues of the day and in the role of media in shaping attitudes. He roamed the streets of New York with his Leica rapidly taking photographs using a prefocused wide angle lens. Often his camera would be tilted, leaving his photographs with a slanted result. The aesthetic is similar to other documentary photographers such as Diane Arbus, Robert Frank, Lisette Model.

His photographs in New York of the Bronx Zoo and the Coney Island Aquarium were used in his book The Animals (1969). In 1980, he published his photographs of the Fort Worth Fat Stock Show and Rodeo.

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

Quotes

"A photograph is the illusion of a literal description of how the camera 'saw' a piece of time and space."
"Photography is not about the thing photographed. It is about how that thing looks photographed."
"I photograph to see what the world looks like in photographs."
"I like to think of photographing as a two-way act of respect. Respect for the medium, by letting it do what it does best, describe. And respect for the subject, by describing as it is. A photograph must be responsible to both."
"I don't know if all the women in the photographs are beautiful, but I do know that the women are beautiful in the photographs." (In reference to his book, "Women are Beautiful.")
"There is nothing as mysterious as a fact clearly described."
"All things are photographable."
"I don't have anything to say in any picture. My only interest in photography is to see what something looks like as a photograph. I have no preconceptions."

Books

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