The other Wino

I asked one of the guys at work today at the gallery whom he would say is the most influential contemporary photographer. After umming and aahing for a little while he listed a number of photographers and then finally settled on the American Garry Winogrand (b.1924-d.1984). Looking through a beautiful coffee-table book on Winogrand’s work, it is easy to see why he is virtually worshipped by street-shooters everywhere- his influence on street photography is unmistakeable (although Winogrand himself thought the term ‘street photographer’ stupid and preferred ‘still photographer’).

Winogrand certainly had personality and grunt. Frank Van Riper of the Washington Post describes him as a ‘street-smart Jewish kid from the Bronx, who considered himself whole only when he held a Leica to his eye, hit the road, savouring and reflecting life through his lens’. He has also been called an ‘an undisciplined mixture of energy, ego, curiosity, ignorance, and street-smart naiveté’. I’m pretty sure we would have gotten along. Friends say he was fearless in the way he approached strangers to take their photograph, although with disarming charm. A good tip to remember, no?

During his lifetime, Winogrand obsessively took photos and had hundreds and thousands of undeveloped rolls of films at the time of his death- basically millions of photos he never even saw himself.  From the prints that are available, we can see Winogrand’s appreciation of everyday life, beautiful women, animals, politics and the complex dynamics between these things. There is so much irony and absurdity in his photos, mostly taken with a wide-angle lens, I wonder what others photos are in the undeveloped rolls of film.

Some of Winogrand’s photos from the 1960’s to 1980s, mostly from the hot streets of New York:

New York, 1961.

Hot. Hot. Hot. These three would not be out of place in Garance Dore or The Sartorialist.

Central Park Zoo, New York City, 1967

Series from the Bronx Zoo

Apollo 11 Moon Shot, Cape Kennedy, Florida, 1969

Los Angeles, 1964

Untitled c.1954

Louis Armstrong and Velma Middleton c. 1954-55

New York, 1969 or earlier

Untitled. 1950s

World’s Fair, New York City, 1964

“No one moment is most important. Any moment can be something”

“Photography is about finding out what can happen in the frame. When you put four edges around some facts, you change those facts”.

~ Garry Winogrand