SZARKOWSKI^^^THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART NEW YORK

260 pages, 208 illustrations

WINOGRAND
FIGMENTS FROM THE REAL WORLD
BY JOHN SZARKOWSKl

Garry Winogrand is, in my view, the central photographer of his

generation. Winogrand’s pictures realize a conception of photog¬
raphy that is richer, more complex, and more problematic than any
other since the Second World War. They also provide a picture of
America during those years—of the flavor and texture of our life
since Truman—that seems to me so true, clear, and tangible that it
almost persuades me that I stood where he stood.
—John Szarkowski

GARRY WINOGRAND was born and raised in the Bronx. After

high school and two years in the army, he briefly studied painting
at Columbia University until a friend showed him the darkroom in
the basement of the school’s architecture building. “I never looked
back,” he later said. For some years he worked as a freelance
photojoumalist and in advertising; by the 1960s his distinctive
themes and style had begun to emerge. The Museum of Modern
Art first substantially showed his work in 1963, and later held two
one-man exhibitions. The Animals, in 1969, and Public Relations,
in 1976. Winogrand received three Guggenheim fellowships for
special photographic projects. He taught at Chicago’s Institute of
Design and then for five years at the University of Texas in Austin.
In 1978 he moved to Los Angeles, where he took pictures inces¬
santly, perhaps compulsively. Although Winogrand was an articu¬
late and conscientious teacher, he resisted talking about his own
photography. “The artist is irrelevant once the work exists,” he
said. ‘All there is is the pictures.”
This book, published to accompany a retrospective exhibition at
The Museum of Modern Art, is the first comprehensive overview of
the work of Garry Winogrand. It contains an eloquent and impor¬
tant essay on the life and work of the photographer by John
Szarkowski and a lavish plate section presenting the photographs
thematically under the following titles: Eisenhower Years, The
Street, Women, The Zoo, On the Road, The Sixties, Etc., The Fort
Worth Fat Stock Show and Rodeo, Airport, and Unfinished Work.

continued on back flap

SPRINGS INDUSTRIES SERIES ON THE ART OF PHOTOGRARHY
FIGMENTS FROM THE REAL WORLD

JOHN SZARKOWSKI

THE MUSEUM OE MODERN ART NEW YORK

Distributed by New York Graphic Society/L ittle, Brown and Company, Boston
 MAIN
779.0924 Winogrand, Garry,
1928-
Winogrand :

Published on the occasion of the exhibition Garry Winogrand, i j, i ^ j

organized by John Szarkowski, Director, Department of Photography,
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, May 11-August 16,1988

Also shown at:

The Art Institute of Chicago, September 17-November 13,1988
Carnegie Mellon University Art Gallery Pittsburgh, February-April 1989
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, May 12-August 17,1989
Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery, University of Texas, Austin, September 7-October 22,1989
Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, Tucson, November 1989-January 1990

Copyright © 1988 by The Museum of Modern Art, New York

All rights reserved
Photographs copyright © by The Estate of Garry Winogrand
Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number 87-62855
Clothbound ISBN 0-87070-640-3
Paperbound ISBN 0-87070-640-1

Edited by Harriet Schoenholz Bee

Designed by Carl Laanes
Production by Daniel Frank
Halftone photography by Robert J, Hennessey
Composition by Concept Typographic Services, New York
Printed by Franklin Graphics, Providence
Bound by Horowitz/Rae, Inc,, Fairfield, NJ

Distributed outside the United States and Canada

by Thames and Hudson Ltd., London

THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

11 West 53 Street
New York, New York 10019

Printed in the United States of America

front cover: New Mexico. 1957

 CONTENTS
FOREWORD 7

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 8

THE WORK OF GARRY WINOGRAND by John Szarkowski 11

EISENHOWER YEARS 43

THE STREET 75

WOMEN 99

THE ZOO 115

ON THE ROAD 133

THE SIXTIES, ETC. 151

THE FORT WORTH FAT STOCK SHOW AND RODEO 173

AIRPORT 193

UNFINISHED WORK 221

CHRONOLOGY 249

NOTES TO THE TEXT 253

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 255

TRUSTEES OF THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART 259

PHOTOGRAPH CREDITS 260

 Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2018 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation

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 FOREWORD
ON FOUR EARLIER OCCASIONS during the past twenty-five
years the Museum showed substantial segments of Garry
Winogrand’s then current work. During his lifetime the prod¬
igality of his output seemed to preclude the possibility of a retro¬
spective review. Now, unhappily, this torrent of pictures is ended,
and it is possible to attempt a first overview of Winogrand’s
remarkable achievement.
That complex task has been made possible by a generous grant
from Springs Industries, Inc., whose support of photography exhi¬
bitions and publications over the past decade has made a contribu¬
tion of incalculable importance to the understanding and appre¬
ciation of that art.
An earlier emergency grant from Springs Industries allowed
the processing of more than twenty-five hundred rolls of film that
Winogrand had left undeveloped at the time of his death. Since
this film was rapidly approaching deterioration, the expeditious
assistance of Springs preserved Winogrand’s last work from irre¬
trievable loss. All those concerned with the story of modern pho¬
tography are in debt to Springs Industries, and to its Chairman
Walter Y. Elisha, for these generous and farsighted contributions.
The Museum also gratefully acknowledges additional support
from the National Endowment for the Arts, whose contribution to
the public knowledge of the arts of today is an essential element in
our cultural life.
Finally, we owe our gratitude to John Szarkowski, Director of
the Museum’s Department of Photography, whose personal com¬
mitment to preserving and presenting the work of Garry
Winogrand is so admirably refiected in this book and in the
exhibition it complements.
—Richard E. Oldenburg
Director, The Museum of Modern Art
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
GARRY WINOGRAND photographed almost constantly, which
left no time for writing the letters and diaries and autographic
analyses that are so precious to the historian. He did however find
time to talk, ebulliently and often memorably. During the last
decade of his life a good sample of that talk was recorded on tapes
made either for public explication or private record, and I am in
debt to those individuals and institutions that allowed me to study
or duplicate this rich electronic file. The audio tapes made by Tbd
Papageorge in 1977 constitute the most complete, least guarded
record of Winogrand’s own view of who he was and what he did;
those made by Jay Maisel in 1980 are unplanned and unstruc¬
tured, but capture something of the character of Winogrand’s cafe
improvisations. James Enyeart of the Center for Creative Photog¬
raphy, the University of Arizona, Tucson, and Arthur Oilman of
the Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, generously made
available tapes of lectures by Winogrand made at their institu¬
tions in 1982 and 1983, respectively. Geoff Winningham of Rice
University provided an unusually rich three-hour tape of
Winogrand in a 1977 classroom discussion. The publicly broadcast
tapes produced by WNET (with Bill Moyers), by ABC (with Bar-
baralee Diamonstein), and by Michael Engler for Tfessa Films,
Hamburg, were also very helpful.
Hard documentation of Winogrand’s life and views in the 1950s
and 1960s is scant; the recollections from this period, written and
verbal, of his friends and colleagues were of essential value. Of
these, Bob Schwalberg, Arthur Goldsmith, George Zimbel, and
Henrietta Brackman were especially helpful. The insights and
guidance of Adrienne Winogrand and Judy Thller were also very
important to my understanding of Winogrand during these years.
Of the written interviews noted in the Selected Bibliography,
those by Dennis Longwell (1972), Charles Hagen (1977), and
David Fahey (1980) were particularly cogent.
Among the lenders to the exhibition which this book accom¬
panies, special thanks must be paid to the Center for Creative
Photography, the University of Arizona, for the generous loan of
very rare prints from its unique Winogrand archive. In addition,
James Enyeart, its Director; Iferrence Pitts, Acting Director; and
Amy Stark, Photo-Archive Librarian, were unstintingly gener¬
ous in making the Center’s holdings available for study.
 I am grateful to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foun¬ Sarah Anne McNear, Newhall Fellow in the Department of
dation, and to Stephen Schlesinger, its Secretary, for making Photography, was the principal assistant on this project from its
available, with the permission of Winogrand’s widow Eileen Adele inception until the expiration of her fellowship late in 1987. She
Hale, copies of the project proposals that the photographer sub¬ contributed both the Chronology and the Selected Bibliography to
mitted to the Foundation. These were extraordinarily helpful. this publication, and her intelligent, energetic, and sensitive col¬
Jeffrey Fraenkel of the Fraenkel Gallery helped both by lend¬ laboration on all phases of its realization has been indispensable.
ing to the exhibition and by assisting with several research prob¬ Harriet Schoenholz Bee, editor of the texts included here, has
lems. For additional research help I would like to thank Leonore made the essay clearer and more felicitous than it was when she
F. Bona of Columbia University, Peggy Duff of the Eastman received it. Its remaining obscurities and unnecessary commas
Kodak Company, Weston Naef of The J. Paul Getty Museum, reflect her tolerance of the author’s stubbornness. It was as always
Ronni Rubenstein of the American Society of Magazine Photogra¬ a genuine pleasure to work with Carl Laanes, a designer who not
phers, Tfennyson Schad, and Laurie Winogrand. only sees but reads, and with Tim McDonough, who understands
I would also like to thank William Samenko, Jr., and the the problem of producing in ink a persuasive analogue for the
Eastman Kodak Company for the generous donation of photo¬ continuous gray scale of the photographic print. I am grateful also
graphic paper for the contact printing of work that had not been to Daniel Frank for his careful supervision of the printing of the
proofed at the time of Winogrand’s death. book, and to Robert Hennessey for the intelligence with which he
The task of viewing, in contact proofs, the third of a million made the reproduction negatives.
exposures that Winogrand left unedited at his death was one for Thomas Consilvio, Winogrand’s printer and friend during the
which no previous experience had prepared me. My equal part¬ last decade of the photographer’s life, has also done all the
ners in this impossible problem were Ibd Papageorge and Thomas posthumous processing and printing. In addition to his under¬
Roma, both of whom had long known Winogrand and his work. standing and selfless interpretation of this work, he has been of
None of us would suggest that the twenty-five pictures reproduced great service to this project by assisting with difficult problems of
here in the section “Unfinished Work” should be regarded as a chronology and subject indentification. He was Winogrand’s
synoptic representation of the art of Winogrand’s last years. We almost constant companion during the Los Angeles years, and his
might say instead that these pictures were chosen because they testimony on that period was of great value to me.
are consonant with and yet different from his earlier work, and I am deeply grateful to Eileen Adele Hale for her wholehearted
represent our sense of the change in his intuitions and ambitions and generous cooperation in all phases of this project. In addi¬
late in his life. It is not of course the selection that Winogrand tion to lending without restriction from the collection of the
would have made, but it is difficult for me to believe that his choice Winogrand estate, she made all work unprocessed or unedited at
would not have included some of these pictures, and I think he the time of her husband’s death freely available for the purposes of
would have thought them all worthy of attention. the book and the exhibition. She has in addition been of inestima¬
I am also grateful to Papageorge and Roma, and to Susan ble help with scores of research problems, and made a major
Kismaric and Peter Galassi of the Department of Photography at contribution to the Chronology. Her efforts to properly preserve
the Museum, for reading my essay on Winogrand, and for their and organize a body of work of staggering proportions have been
substantive and constructive suggestions, many of which I have admirably conceived and intelligently pursued.
adopted. The most crucial reader of the text was Lee Friedlander, Finally, I would like to add my own word of thanks to Springs
Winogrand’s close friend since the mid-1950s, and his peer, whose Industries, Inc., for their generous and essential support of this
disapproval would have made the essay, in my eyes, not worth project. Their gift has been to all those who love photography, and
publishing. those who would better understand it. —J. S.
 THE WORK OF
GARRY WINOGRAND
GARRY WINOGRAND discovered photography—or was con¬ A chief prophet of the new photography was Alexey Brodovitch.
fronted by it—at a moment in its history when it was particularly As art director of Harper’s Bazaar, Brodovitch used or commis¬
susceptible to redefinition (one might say to takeover) by a new sioned much of the best photography of the fifties. As a teacher (in
generation of primitives. By 1950 most of photography’s ambitious the legendary Brodovitch Workshops, where Winogrand was a
young supplicants considered photojournalism to be the aaena scholarship student in 1949) he fired his students with the idea
of conspicuous opportunity. The picture magazines were at the that each of them was unique, and that if they could describe their
height of their success and confidence, and magazines that had own perceptions their photographs would be good. His own book of
traditionally depended on the written word had come to devote a 1945, Ballet,^ exhibited the same disregard for conventional stan¬
substantial number of their pages to photo-stories. The greatly dards of photographic craft that was later adopted by many of his
expanded market of the postwar years made room for scores of new students. In his own photography and in his teaching he proposed
photojournalists. The previous generation of photojournalists had that successful photography was the triumph of intuition over
been photographers before they were journalists, and had gener¬ science and design.
ally come to the new field with a fairly broad training in the craft The new style was hotly debated; between the younger and older
of photography. But at the time of Winogrand’s entrance one could disputants the argument tended to reduce itself to an exchange of
make a beginning with little more than energy, confidence, and a slogans about honesty, the older favoring honesty of craft, the
distaste for regular working hours. Much of the minimal technical younger honesty of feeling. It was an artistic argument in an old
training of these new recruits came neither from schools nor tradi¬ tradition, in which the young accuse the old of hard arteries, and
tional apprenticeship but from the wizards of the camera shops, the old say that the young cannot draw. By the end of 1952 Jackie
who knew about cameras and lenses and films and chemicals, if Judge, editor of Modern Photography, said, ‘1 think we have
not much about pictures, and from friends who shared on a daily almost reached the ridiculous point where it is necessary to speak
basis the results of what seemed a continuing group experiment. up for the technicians.... I’m all for knowing how people feel—but
Partly out of this absence of conventional technical competence, I’d also like to know what they look like.”^
partly out of the example of the new Italian movies,^ with their It would not be a gross exaggeration to say that, in the eyes of the
coarse grain and their expressively ugly gray scale, and partly out young turks, a photograph that was sharp all over, that was fully
of the popular image of the photojournalist as an adventurer and exposed in the shadows, and that was not visibly grainy was
man of action, too much in a hurry to concern himself with insincere. Th add artificial light to the scene was worse, it was
refinements, ceime a new attitude toward conventional ideas of simple fraud.
photographic quality. The goal of the new work was not clarity but In rational terms this was nonsense, but in artistic terms the
authenticity. It did not so much describe its subject as allude to it. question was not so simple. Ta the new photographers the old
The new photographers were referred to by unsympathetic obser¬ pictures seemed planned, designed, conceived, understood in
vers as the quality-be-damned school, and the epithet was as apt advance: they were little more than illustrations, in fact less, since
as one-line labels are likely to be; it was aimed at photographers they claimed to be something else—the exploration of real life.
who did not in fact care much about the precise description of The new style was also called the available-light revolution, and
surfaces, the elegance of smoothly rendered tonalities, or accepted if one forgives its portentousness the phrase is useful. Photogra¬
notions of good design. If their pictures seemed gratuitously phers had of course always used available light, which during most
casual even by the relatively permissive standards of photojour¬ of the medium’s first century was generally daylight. It was not
nalism, they also seemed to be lifted directly and spontaneously until the twenties that artificial light began to be a standard part
from the flow of real life; they seemed formed not by rules and of the working photographer’s vocabulary, and not until the early
calculation, but by intuition and strong feeling. thirties that devices were marketed that would synchronize the
light of a flashbulb with the operation of a camera’s shutter. The
possibilities of artificial light had been quickly seized by the
picture magazines, whose editors appreciated the new tool not
only for its ability to produce pictures where photography would
otherwise have been impossible but also for the fact that it could
describe a scene with sharply incised detail and a graphic
simplicity that made the photograph seem clearer than real life.
Artificial light was embraced with special enthusiasm in the
United States, particularly by Life magazine, whose example in
photojournalistic style was decisive. The more sophisticated users
of flash photography quickly developed techniques that utilized
several bulbs for a single shot, producing results that were less
obviously artificial than those achieved by a single bulb attached
to the camera. These pictures approached in their character the
immaculately lighted Hollywood movies of the thirties, whose
imagery came to be accepted as natural in spite of its uncanny,
luxuriant clarity.
European magazines had tended toward a photographic style
that favored ambience over clarity of detail—a sense of immediacy
over the quantity of information conveyed. After World War II this
approach began to gain favor in the United States. In 1946 Life
lured the English photographer Leonard McCombe to its staff and
stipulated in his contract that he was not to use flashbulbs.'*
In 1948 the exhibition French Photography Today, selected by
the American photographer Louis Stettner, was shown in New
York at the galleries of The Photo League. Although Stettner
praised the work, he felt compelled to apologize for its failure to
meet American standards of technical finish, but added, “It must
be remembered that most of the photographers in this exhibition
consider their work finished when it appears in reproduction
form. And they print accordingly.... French photographers have
not yet learned what Stieglitz first taught us: that a print can exist
as a thing in itself”® Beaumont Newhall noted that “admiration
for the images was qualified by frequent puzzlement by visitors at
the photographic quality of the work. How, they asked, could the
League show prints so poor in quality?”® But the prints that
survive from that time by the photographers included in the show
Alexey Brodovitch, Choreartium. c. 1935-39 (from Ballet, 1945)
(among them Boubat, Brassai, Doisneau, and Ronnis) today seem
technically unexceptionable. In comparison to what would soon Margaret Bourke-White, Yazoo City, Mississippi. 1936
 follow they seem in their craft models of conventional virtue.
The spirit of what was to come was presaged by a statement that
Doisneau had written on the back of one of his prints in the Photo
League show: “The photographer must be absorbent—like a blot¬
ter, allow himself to be permeated by the poetic moment.... His
technique should be like an animal function... he should act auto¬
matically.”^ The new photographers who emerged in the next
years followed Doisneau’s advice with an abandon that he could
not have envisioned.
By 1952 the new purism had been ratified (it seemed) by Henri
Cartier-Bresson, who in his introduction to The Decisive Moment
proscribed the use of flashbulbs, “out of respect for the actual
light—even when there isn’t any of it.”® On the basis of his own
work, one might guess that Cartier-Bresson meant by this that if
there was not adequate light one might go to dinner. The new
photographers kept photographing with what to the casual
observer might seem to have been no light at all, and on occasion
made a coherent picture in terms of nothing but a pattern of
glittering highlights—smeary white shapes against a black field.
Although the picture might bear little resemblance to what an
eyewitness might have remembered, it had about it a quality that
one could at the time call honesty, perhaps because it was clearly
different from the familiar varieties of artifice.
One of the consequences of the available-light morality was that
its adherents were forced to work in graphic rather than tactile
terms if the meaning of their pictures was to be clear. One could
describe a head with a few broad tones of gray, but one could not
with the same technique describe a crowd. The available-light
photographer moved in closer and included less in the frame; the
best of his pictures came to resemble posters. The new style
sacrificed all other virtues to the virtue of simplicity. It was a style
nurtured by the magazines, designed to produce pictures that
would convey meaning at a glance. Eventually it produced pic¬
tures whose meaning seemed exhausted at a glance.
It would be incorrect to suggest that the new philosophy carried
the day. Tb most photographers it was less a philosophic question
than a matter of fashion, or a pwlitical position that served the
ambitions of younger photographers who were working with lim¬
ited skills and limited machinery. Most of these hungry young

14
photographers were not wedded to the available-light idea, or to
any other catechism that might restrict their freedom of move¬
ment. But for a moment the permissive new atmosphere made
room for changes that went beyond fashion.

IN 1948, AFTER HIGH SCHOOL and two years in the army,

Garry Winogrand was in a desultory way studying painting at
Columbia University when he met George Zimbel, a student and
a photographer for the Columbia Spectator. Zimbel introduced
Winogrand to the darkroom in the basement of the architecture
building, which was open twenty-four hours a day. It was
Winogrand’s first exposure to the process of photography, and the
simple magic of it captivated him completely. Within two weeks he
had abandoned painting. “I never looked back,” he said later.
Once he began to devote all of his energy to photography he
could no longer pose as a student and enjoy the financial support of Lee Friedlander. Garry Winogrand. 1957
the GI Bill, but he did continue for some time to use the Columbia
darkroom, forming with his friend Zimbel the Midnight-to-Dawn
Club, which had full use of the place while more normal sorts
slept. For a year or two he experimented with various cameras—a
Graphlex, a Rolleicord, a Kodak 35—but soon most of his work
was being done with the Leica. When flush, he bought surplus film
in bulk at $1.49 for one hundred feet (approximately 700 expo¬
sures) and ten-by-ten-inch paper, designed for aerial photography,
which cut in two would yield two five-by-seven-inch prints. When
necessary he would cadge paper and chemicals from his friends.
He lived with his parents in the Pelham Parkway section of the
Bronx, and presumably received some walking-around money
from his father Abraham, a leather worker, or his mother Bertha,
who made neckties on a piecework basis. During the first years
photography brought him no income, and it can only be guessed
that he lived by those unrecorded strategies known intuitively to
indigent but Eunbitious youth.
It is not difficult to imagine the young Winogrand as a kind of
city hick—an undisciplined mixture of energy, ego, curiosity,
ignorance, and street-smart naivete. Bob Schwalberg, a friend opposite:
from the early days, said, “He was a wild man from the begin¬
Ed Feingersh. Jazz Musician, c. 1955
ning,” and added, “Everybody knew from the start that there was
something special about Garry, but it was hard to know why.... He Garry Winogrand. Metropolitan Opera Bar. c. 1953
 was always a little more private than the rest of us.”® Winogrand
told Tbd Papageorge that at the age of ten or twelve he walked the
streets of the Bronx until late at night, seeking refuge from the
apartment where his parents “did not put a high priority on
privacy” and where one could be alone only in the bathroom.^®
Late in 1951 Winogrand was taken on as a stringer for the Pix
agency, where his friend Zimbel was already working and where
he met Schwalberg and Ed Feingersh, one of the brightest young
stars of the new style. The position of stringer allowed a photogra¬
pher to use the agency darkroom and the photographers’ office,
where he could share jokes and technical data, play cards, and
borrow materials from the solvent regulars. In theory stringers
might get occasional assignments; in practice they generally were
self-assigned, shooting what interested them or what they thought
might sell. The agency, at its discretion, might show their work to
prospective clients.
In January 1952 Winogrand married nineteen-year-old
Adrienne Lubow, whom he had courted with characteristic vigor
and artlessness since they had met three years earlier. The mar¬
riage was a success only in terms of the children it produced,
Laurie (1956) emd Ethan (1958). It soon became clear to Adrienne
that Winogrand was egocentric, overbearing, demanding, and
(except to the children) insensitive. It seemed reasonable to
Winogrand that his wife should work in order to allow him
some freedom in pursuing his ambitions as a photographer. She,
scarcely out of childhood, wanted to be a dancer, and considered
her ambitions as valid as his. The marriage was interrupted by
lengthy separations, which, except for the last, would end when,
clean-shaven and wearing a coat and tie, Winogrand would prom¬
ise again to be what he could not be. In Adrienne’s later judgment,
it was an astrological problem; her husband had been overly
Ed Feingersh. Adrienne Lubow and Garry Winogrand.
influenced by the active, creative, and expressive planets—Mars,
Neptune, and Mercury.^
By 1954 Feingersh had recommended Winogrand to the photog¬
raphers’ representative Henrietta Brackman, doubtless out of
genuine conviction and perhaps also to reduce the drain on his
own supply of film, paper, and small bills. He told Brackman that
Winogrand was making “about eighty-nine cents a week” at Pix. If
this was intended as hyperbole, it may have missed the mark.
Winogrand later remembered that one year he had made sixty
dollars at Pix, although it is unlikely that he ever knew, to the end
of his life, how much money passed through his hands in a year.
For his interview with Brackman, Winogrand arrived with three
or four piles of prints that reached from floor to desk top.
Brackman recorded her sense of him in her notes as a person of
“strong inner drive—has own style and character.”^ Brackman
had previously represented only three photographers: Guy
Gillette, John Lewis Stage, and Dan Weiner (1919-1959). Weiner
was one of the exceptional young photographers of the day, and was
in addition a man of some cultivation and comity, who did not feel
uncomfortable in a suit. Winogrand, perhaps surprised that these
seemingly antithetical attributes could exist in a single person,
admired Weiner and perhaps held him a little in awe. The general
tone of Brackman’s group was a good deal more civilized than that
at Pix. “We were generally reprobates at Pix,” said Zimbel, who
credits Brackman with making Winogrand palatable to the maga¬
zine world.i^
Ben Schultz, Sandra and Dan Weiner. 1941?
During the mid-fifties Winogrand’s pictures were published by
Collier’s, Argosy, Pageant, Redbook, Men, Gentry, Climax, and, in
its first years. Sports Illustrated. For the most part he worked the
same shallow veins of human interest and social uplift that his
colleagues worked, and much of the time he made pictures not
clearly distinguishable from those of other photographers of his
generation. He did stories on “Whitey the Goat and Her Kids,” on
‘The Minister’s Unacceptable Family,” on clochards at the board¬
walk, on the life of an apprentice prizefighter, on “Cat Meets Dog.”
The best stories were those that had no story line, on entertainers,
parades, expensive saloons, or athletic contests, where the photog¬
rapher could forget narrative and concentrate on movement,
flesh, gesture, display, and human faces. Years later he said (with
characteristic disregard for tact and exactitude) that a photojour¬
nalist had to be able to make only two pictures: the big head shot
and the middle-distance picture of a lone figure walking down the
beach. He meant that he had lost interest in the magazines, and
that the magazines had lost interest in what he meant by photog¬
raphy. But the best of his early work as a journalist describes a
world that is full of visceral energy and a smouldering beauty that
lies close to violence.
 In the mid-fifties Winogrand’s work was still formed wholly by
his own intuitive response to work in the magazines, plus the
judgments of a little group of colleagues. He was ignorant of the
history of photography and the history of much else. The process of
his work was exciting and kept him moving, and he got paid for it,
a fact that never quite ceased to surprise him. Photography was a
kind of magic for which he had a taste and a talent, as another
man might for chess. It is not clear that he ever then considered
the question of whether it was useful. A quarter-century later he
still avoided answering it.
Late in 1955 Winogrand, with Adrienne, made his first indepen¬
dent excursion across the country, because of a vague sense that
“there were pictures to be made out there.” When Weiner learned
of the plan he showed Winogrand his copy of American Photo¬
graphs, by Walker Evans, a name with which Winogrand was not
familiar. Winogrand explained much later that, ‘Tor the ASMP
[American Society of Magazine Photographers] Walker Evans did
not exist.” He remembered the experience of the book as the first
time that he had been moved by photographs—not as in moved to
tears, but moved to understanding. For the first time he realized
that photography could deal with the fact of intelligence. He
advertised for the book—then out of print—and for the first time
in his life paid fifteen dollars for a book. The trip west produced
surprisingly few photographs. Even in those days Winogrand was
a heavy shooter, and it is difficult to believe that in almost four

Walker Evans. Main Street of Pennsylvania To\A/n. 1935 months of traveling he shot only the thirty-five rolls or so that
seem to survive in his files. Many years later he remembered that
he had had technical failures; he was perhaps also a little dis¬
armed by a country that looked so little like the one he knew, and
so much like photographs by Walker Evans.
In the same year Robert Frank began the cross-country trip
that produced the pictures for his enormously infiuential book The
Americans. Winogrand did not know Frank or his work, but both
had been deeply impressed by Evans. In 1955 Frank was a mature
and sophisticated artist ready to produce his best work;
opposite: Winogrand was still a raw talent, only beginning to wonder what a
photograph might be. In the thousands of miles that they traveled
Robert Frank, St. Francis, Gas Station, and City Hall-Los Angeles. 1955
they did once stop at the same motif
Garry Winogrand. Los Angeles, 1955 Winogrand told Tbd Papageorge in 1977 that he had begun to

18
be a serious photographer about 1960. Years later Schwalberg recurred like malaria throughout the rest of his life, possibly as an
remembered “the years around 1960” as a period of personal index of his loneliness, and of his inability either to escape or to
failure for Winogrand.^^ It is not difficult to find good reasons. In satisfy a lust that seemed not, in the contemporary mode, the
professional terms the fat years for photojoimnalists were ending. desire for a rollicking, trouble-free sex life, but some more ata¬
Collier’s, perhaps the most profitable of Winogrand’s customers, vistic need, in which women represented neither pleasure nor
had folded in 1957, and in the following years other buyers fol¬ companionship, but magic power.
lowed its example or reduced their dependence on photo-stories, Winogrand’s view of women was perhaps outrageous, or was
which now seemed, with the success of television, something of an perhaps saved from outrageousness by its simplicity and open¬
anachronism. In 1958 Feingersh, the most talented of Winogrand’s ness, and by its reckless enthusiasm. If he loved the idea of women
close friends Eunong the young photographic radicals, died from for wrong or insufficient reasons, he nevertheless loved it without
alcohol and self-neglect, and perhaps from a failure of confidence reservation or imposture, and without being embarrassed by the
in his own genius. fact that his appreciation of women as a principle seemed to many
Winogrand spoke of the Cuban missile crisis of1962 as a crucial of his friends a little ludicrous.
episode in his life. During the days and nights when the issue Winogrand repeatedly told the story of a great day in his early
remained in doubt he walked the streets, in despair out of fear for teens, when he and several classmates had somehow secured jobs
the life of his family and himself and his city, and from his own as supernumeraries with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. The
impotence to affect the outcome. Finally it came to him that he was ballet in question was the Gaite Parisienne, and Winogrand, with
nothing—powerless, insignificant, helpless—and that knowl¬ false beard and sideburns, sat on stage in the bandstand, pretend¬
edge, he said, liberated him. He was nothing, so he was free to lead ing to play a toy cornet. “All that flesh! I couldn’t believe it.... My
his own life. It is at this point that Winogrand’s political activities face was buried in thighs. I think I never got over that.”^®
ceased. His earlier involvement with the Young Democratic Club However problematic Winogrand’s view of women may have
and the American Society of Magazine Photographers was been, the best pictures that he made in celebration of that view
dropped.^® For the rest of his life he apparently belonged to no were original and compelling, possessed by a vitality and a psy¬
organizations, emd he declined to vote. chological urgency that is ultimately due less to the subjects than
In 1962 Winogrand was also facing the dissolution of his mar¬ to the pictures; to the electric character of their drawing, and the
riage. Tb all appearances he was a comfortably secularized Jew provisional, almost kinetic nature of their pictorial structure.
and an unquestioning agnostic—a man not quite interested A collection of Winogrand’s pictures of women in public places,
enough in the issue to be a convinced atheist. Nevertheless, the mostly made during the decade of the sixties, was published in
important ethical strictures had retained much of their force. 1975 as Women Are Beautiful. Winogrand’s own appreciation of
Winogrand told Papageorge that in his family, divorce was not a women was enthusiastic and undemanding, and he naively
recognized option, and it had not been for him, until the failure of assumed that the rest of the world, at least the rest of the male
his marriage could no longer be denied. Winogrand and Adrienne world, would be eager to buy a book of photographs of anonymous,
separated for the last time in 1963, but their divorce did not fully-dressed women walking down the street. His expectations of
become final until 1966. Both the loss of his wife and the loss of his commercial success were disappointed. In general, women dis¬
marriage were profound defeats for Winogrand. Perhaps, like the liked the book and men were mystified by it, demonstrating that
missile crisis, they were also liberating. an artist’s enthusiasms can muddle even the most basic of issues.
About 1960 Winogrand had begun to photograph women on the Most photographers and critics found the pictures uneven in
street. The subject remained a major preoccupation for several quedity and the book somehow shapeless as a whole. In retrospect
years until about 1965, when he met his second wife, and it Winogrand considered it the weakest of his books, flawed by
permissive editing (his own). He prided himself on his resistance
to rhetoric (“In general, I’m not easy to jive”), but he finally
admitted that women impaired his critical faculties. He was an
easy mark for the rhetoric of women’s bodies.
Although the book was not a complete success—perhaps
because it was not a complete success—Winogrand remained
deeply interested in it, and spoke, possibly in jest, of a sequel,
which he threatened to call “Son of Women Are Beautiful.” It was
typical of him that he was most interested in those parts of his
work that were the most problematic. He had a special affection
for those of his pictures that were almost out of control, the
pictures in which the triumph of form over chaos was precarious.
He believed that a successful photograph must be more interest¬
ing than the thing photographed, but he photographed nothing
that did not interest him as a fact of life. Success—the vitality and
energy of the best pictures—came from the contention between
the anarchic claims of life and the will to form.
During periods of separation from his wife, Winogrand spent
much of his time with his children at the Central Park Zoo, which
was lively, convenient, and free. In 1962 Winogrand, in reviewing
his proof sheets, discovered that some of the pictures that he had
made on these outings were more than family souvenirs, and he
began to visit the city’s zoos alone, to discover what the subject
might mean to him. Zoos had been favorite subjects for photogra¬
phers—especially amateur photographers—for a generation, the
subject matter being universally interesting, easy of access, and
well lighted, and it was a rare photography magazine that did not
include pictures of polar bears floating on their backs, or lions
looking regal, or pandas quizzical. As a rule these pictures were
made from vemtage points that avoided reference to the bars of the
cages, or the human visitors and keepers—to the facts of life of
zoos—and gave us informal portraits of the animals at home, so to
speak. In Winogrand’s zoo, on the other hand, the animals are not
Garry Winogrand. New York, 1961
more important than the humans, and are in fact united with
them in a peculiar kind of symbiosis. Winogrand’s zoo is a kind of
theater, in which humams and the lower vertebrates act out in
parable the comic drama of modern urban life.
Forty-six of the best of the zoo pictures were published in 1969 as
The Animals. (The title was Winogrand’s. He was certain of its
 rightness, although he could not or would not say why, and he
firmly rejected all alternative titles suggested by the publisher,
including “Winogrand’s Zoo.”) The planning of the book was based
on the hope that a small, inexpensive, well-produced book of
advanced photography dealing with a popular subject might
attract broad interest. The book was printed in gravure in an
edition of 30,000 copies, to sell at $2.50, and was a resounding
commercial failure, the last copies finally being remaindered
years later. Those who loved zoos were perhaps distressed by the
book’s irreverent dark humor, which saw the animals as no more
clearly noble than their human visitors. Those who were unin¬
terested in zoos did not notice the book. The photographic press
generally ignored it, perhaps misled by the fact that it was thin
and inexpensive. Nevertheless, for coherence of style and mean¬
ing, for its achievement of simplicity in bedlam. The Animals
seems to me the most fully successful of the four remarkable books
of Winogrand’s work published during his lifetime.
Winogrand said that he had begun to be a serious photographer
about 1960, but like many of his grudging, elliptical remarks on
his own work, this appraisal should not be accepted uncritically.
From the beginning, Winogrand’s best work had a powerful and
distinctive authority. The nervous, manic, nearly chaotic quality
of these frames was an appropriate formulation of a sense of life
that was balanced somewhere between animal high spirits and an
apprehension of moral disaster. Even if one granted that the form
and content of a picture—a good picture or a bad one—could be
separated, it would be difficult to imagine how the best half-dozen
pictures of Winogrand’s 1955 nightclub series could have been
better formed in terms of their meaning. But if a time machine
could have brought those scenes and actors back to Winogrand a
decade later he would have made different pictures. The people in
the earlier pictures—free agents with their own agendas,
improvising their own one-liners—would have become players in
a more complex drama, serving roles within a larger design of
which they are unaware.
Winogrand might have meant that about 1960 he began to
recognize, and to realize consciously in photographic terms, his
Garry Winogrand, Ethan and Laurie Winogrand. c. 1961
own sense of life. He steadfastly refused to discuss the question
Garry Winogrand. Ei Morocco. 1955 in philosophical terms, and would instead steer the question to

22
technical grounds, perhaps to discuss his gradual mastery of the but could also intensify his intuited sense of his picture’s mean¬
wide-angle lens, which was not precisely irrelevant, but rather an ings. In Radio City, 1961 (page 25), the photograph does not prove
impersonal (and therefore permissible) way of speaking about a that the young man on the left has noticed the young woman on
kind of picture that described more from closer, producing a the right, or even that he has the power of sight, but in the picture
splayed perspective and an eccentric drawing that (like a polar he is falling toward her with vertiginous helplessness, beyond the
map) challenged our familiar sense of the proper relationship pull of gravity or reason.
of things. It should be pointed out that Winogrand scorned technical
effects, including wide-angle effects, and that he abandoned bis
IN THE STREET PICTURES of the early sixties Winogrand attempts to use the extremely wide-angle 21mm lens because he
began to develop two pictorial strategies that he found suggested could not control or conceal its attention-getting mannerisms. He
in certain pictures in Frank’s The Americans. The first of these said (repeatedly) that there was no special way that a photograph
related to unexplored possibilities of the wide-angle lens on the should look, and he could not abide a lens that made photographs
hand camera. The convention al conception of the wide-angle lens look a special way.
saw it as a tool that included more of the potential subject from a Years later, when students (at lecture after lecture) asked him
given vantage point; most photographers would not use it unless why he tilted the frame, it would give him pleasure to deny that it
their backs were literally against tbe wall. Winogrand learned to was tilted, meaning perhaps that the finished print was always
use it as a way of including what he wanted from a closer vantage hung square to the wall, or reproduced square to the page. He also
point, from which he could photograph an entire pedestrian (for said that the tilt was never arbitrary, that there was always a
example) from a distance at which we normally focus only on reason, which is true if one counts intuitive experiment as a
faces. From this intimate distance the shoes of the subject are seen reason. Sometimes he said that it was, on occasion, simply a way of
from above, its face straigbt-on, or even a little from below, and including what he wanted within the frame, but bis proof sheets
tbe whole of the figure is drawn with an unfamiliar, unsettling make it clear that he would often tilt first one way and then the
complexity. other, trying to find the configuration of facts that would best
Tb pursue such a strategy while photographing people on the express the force of the energies that were his subject. Sometimes
street means that the camera back is never vertical, as prescribed he suggested elliptically that he tilted the frame to make the
by classic procedure; if the figure fills the frame the lens will be picture square and secure.
pointed at the subject’s navel, and the camera back will be inclined Winogrand was uninterested in making pictures that he knew
some forty-five degrees downward from vertical. In this posture would succeed, and one might guess that in the last twenty years
any lens will violate our belief that we should see the walls of of his life, excepting his commercial work, he never made an
buildings as parallel to each other, but the wide-angle lens, exposure that he was confident would satisfy him. The most widely
because of its broader cone of vision, will exaggerate the effect, and quoted summation of his position is surely his remark that he
destroy all sense of architectural order, lb retrieve a kind of photographed in order to see what the things that interested him
stability Winogrand experimented with tilting the frame, making looked like as photographs.*'^ Like many of Winogremd’s epigrams,
a vertical near the left edge of his subject square with the frame, this one seemed designed to infuriate the guardians of conven¬
and then a vertical near the right edge, or a dominant vertical tional photographic wisdom. On the surface it would seem to mean
anywhere between. In the process he discovered that he could precisely the opposite of what Edward Weston meant when he said
compose his pictures with a freedom that he had not utilized he wished to previsualize his finished print in every detail and
before, and that the tilted frame could not only maintain a kind of tonality before be released the shutter. It should be noted however
discipline over the flamboyant tendencies of the wide-angle lens that Winogrand’s remark defines a motive and Weston’s a goal. It
24
 Garry Winogrand, Radio City 1961
should also be understood that Weston defines a goal which, once
attained, would be useless. An artist of Weston’s restless, vaulting
ambition could not have kept himself amused by manufacturing
perfect replicas of pictures that were already perfectly finished in
his head, and that could not reward him with surprise, or the thrill
of success after doubt. Weston’s statement and Winogrand’s
express a shared fascination, central to the work of each, in the
difference between photographs and the world they describe, and
in the possibility that the former may nevertheless, if good
enough, tell us something important about the latter.
It is of course true that Weston could not have tolerated the opposite: Garry Winogrand. Proof sheet (3392). 1961
 condition of perpetual contingency that was the circumstance
central to Winogrand’s work, nor could Winogrand have hoped to
previsualize a subject that interested him only if it was in the
process of becoming something else. The motif was in principle
inexhaustible as long as his attention held, so he would keep
shooting and moving, revising the framing and the vantage point,
and re-editing the component parts of his subject matter, hoping
for an instant of stasis—a resolution so gently provisional that it
would scarcely seem to halt the efflorescence of change.
Winogrand said that if he saw a familiar picture in his view¬
finder he “would do something to change it”—something that
would give him an unsolved problem. He would step back or
change to a shorter lens, which gave him more facts to organize,
and changed the meaning of the facts by changing the character of
their setting. Winogrand had been consciously interested in the
question of viewing distance at least since the mid-sixties, by
which time he understood that closer is merely easier, not neces¬
sarily better. How small in relation to the total field can the most
important part of the subject be and still be clearly described? Or,
more precisely, how is the meaning of the most important part of
the subject affected by ever5rthing else within the frame? One of
his most compelling pictures. Near Carmel, of 1964 (page 148),
shows what we assume to be a young matron approaching her 1958
Chevrolet, which is parked in the open garage of her moderately
prosperous suburban house. The picture is made in the bright
sunlight of a summer day, from a considerable distance—perhaps
from a car parked across the street from the subject—and shows
us the whole of the house and most of the driveway. The informa¬
tion given provides no substantial reason for us to wonder what
adventure calls the woman from the cool security of her house, but
we do wonder, perhaps because of the information withheld by
distance. The picture puts us in the position of the private detec¬
tive, ready to see significance at the very threshold of visibility.
The general course of change in Winogrand’s ideas about photo¬
graphic form can be seen in two football pictures, the first made in
1953 at a game between the New York Giants and the Cleveland
Browns, the second twenty years later in Tbxas. The first is simple
both in graphics and content, and concentrates the game to its
most basic confrontation—ball-carrier and tackier. The descrip-

26
opposite and above: Garry Winogrand. New York City 1968
tion is broad and impressionistic, and the picture could be (counting officials) in mid-flight to seek a better vantage point, or
reproduced on a commemorative coin, with the inscription: wait for a better light; nor could he even see, except in terms of
Browns 7, Giants 0. The later picture may be the only football general massing, the picture he was making, perhaps one of three
picture made from the sidelines in which all twenty-two players made during the same play, while he was presumably giving some
are visible. The style of description is literal and encyclopedic; the attention to the possibility of being hit at high speed by a half-ton
subject of the picture is not the drama of heroic confrontation but of muscular young athletes. The picture was a matter of luck,
the excitement of chaotic violence. The meaning of the first picture meaning that one hundred other exposures attempting the same
seems perfectly clear; the second simplifies nothing but achieves general idea—the idea of a picture that would seem to shake in its
nevertheless an ordered pattern of fact that we had not seen before. frame—might he failures, and show not the essence of chaos but
It was of course a matter of luck. That is to say, Winogrand could merely chaos.
not order the pattern into existence, or stop the twenty-five bodies Most of Winogrand’s best pictures—let us say all of his best
 Garry Winogrand. Austin, Texas. 1974
pictures—involve luck of a different order than that kind of mini¬
mal, survivor’s luck on which any human achievement depends.
It is luck of an order that can perhaps be compared to the luck of
an athlete, for whom the game is devised to make failure the rule
and conspicuous success never wholly in the hands of the hero.
The great Henry Aaron hit a home run 755 times in his career,
but failed to do so almost 12,000 times.
As Winogrand grew older and his ambition grew more demand¬
ing, the role of luck in his work grew larger. As his motifs became
more complex, and more unpredictable in their development, the
chances of success in a given frame became smaller. opposite: Garry Winogrand. Browns vs. Giants. 1953
 A SHORT GENERATION after the picture magazines had begun,
their high promise had faded. By the early sixties they no longer
seemed to most photographers a likely source of either artistic or
financial support. For the latter, Winogrand, like many other
photographers who had considered themselves journalists, turned
to advertising. It was a field for which he was conspicuously ill-
suited by temperament and training, and it is a tribute to the force
of his personality and his powers of persuasion that he was given
advertising assignments, and for perhaps a decade made the
better part of his living from advertising, in spite of being tech¬
nically unprepared and fundamentally uninterested. He did not,
of course, receive the high-paying assignments, which would have
required a studio and a staff and some genuine interest; but on the
fringes of the industry he hustled enough jobs to support himself
and his real work. If he knew that his advertising pictures were
—at best—second-rate, he did not admit it to others. It was his
position that advertising photography was a simple question of
craft, something that any intelligent professional could manage,
and that all such photographs were in some perversely Jeffer¬
Garry Winogrand. Advertisement for 100 Pipers Scotch, 1966 sonian sense equal.
Winogrand and his second wife, Judy Tbller, had met in the
offices of Doyle, Dane, Bernbach, where she was an advertising
cop5rwriter. Her encouragement and perhaps her influence may
have helped sustain his work in advertising, but by the time of
their separation in 1969, after two years of marriage, he had lost
whatever interest he might once have had in that work. He had
lost interest in journalism also. He later recalled 1969 as the year
when he had stopped being “a hired gun, more or less.... I enjoyed
it until I stopped.... I just didn’t want to do it anymore.”^®
If Winogrand consciously gave up commercial assignrnents in
1969, he had much earlier come to devote his best energies to his
personal work, for which there was only occasionally and inciden¬
tally a market. After about 1960 the work for which he is known
was done for himself, generally without any clear idea of where,
or if, a broader audience might exist. For Winogrand, as perhaps
for most ambitious photographers of this century, the essential,
supportive audience was often small enough to gather around a
cafe table.
As early as the late fifties he had begun to seek ways outside the

30
magazines to make his work visible. In 1959 and again in 1960 his thing. The difference between them was that the snapshooter
work was shown in New York galleries.i^ In 1963, in his first thought he knew what the subject was in advance, and for
substantial museum showing, forty-five of his pictures were Winogrand, photography was the process of discovering it.
included in the exhibition Five Unrelated Photographers, at The In the late sixties, as interest in Winogrand’s personal work
Museum of Modern Art (with Ken Heyman, George Krause, began to grow, he began to be asked to teach—at first as a visiting
Jerome Liebling, and Minor White). In the same year he first professional who would spend a little time at New York art
applied for a Guggenheim Fellowship, which he was granted the schools, in which it was generally assumed that teachers of art
following spring. The fellowship allowed him a year, more or less, transmitted to others the skills and knowledge necessary to per¬
in which to travel and photograph, free of commercial pressures form as artists, or at least as technicians in the world of art. By the
for the first time in his career. early seventies Winogrand was beginning to be courted as a minor
Pictures from the Guggenheim year constituted most of cult figure by the art departments of American universities,
Winogrand’s representation in the 1967 Museum of Modern Art whose perspective was substantially different: to them an artist
exhibition New Documents, which also showed the work of Diane was not an expert who might share his craft secrets, but a cultural
Arbus and Lee Friedlander. The exhibition received considerable philosopher and therapist. By 1971, when he accepted a full-time
attention; in Winogrand’s case much of it was directed to what (though temporary) teaching position at Chicago’s Institute of
seemed from a traditional perspective the casualness, the formal Design, he was expected to explain his work in public. His expla¬
slackness, of his new pictures. The best of these were more com¬ nations were in the beginning elliptical and evasive, even though
plex, and less immediately forceful, than the earlier street pic¬ the evasions were often camouflaged by wit. At one Winogrand
tures, or those from the zoo, and might be regarded as the expres¬ slide show a distinguished curator, distressed by what seemed to
sion of a final break with standards of picture construction that him the unconsidered casualness of the pictures—by the absence
could be discussed in terms of the idea of composition—a felicitous of that careful construction and elegant finish that identify the
disposition of parts—or the idea of good design, which suggests an best photography of the high modernist period—finally asked
underlying graphic armature to which the information of the from the back of the darkened room, “How long did it take you to
picture is fastened. The new Winogrand pictures proposed a stan¬ make that picture, Mr. Winogrand?” Winogrand turned to the
dard of construction in which the appearance of the photograph is screen, pretended to consider the question, and then replied, “I
the unmediated result of the point of view, framing, and moment think it was a hundred and twenty-fifth of a second.”
that best describes the photographer’s definition of his subject. He Winogrand did not quite trust either the motives or the compe¬
had said, ’There is no special way that a photograph should look.” tence of art schools, and perhaps did not altogether trust himself
His own looked the way they did because his definition of the for accepting their support for no better reason than that he
subject was unfamiliar and unsettling, and subversive of cate¬ needed it. In compensation he went out of his way to make it clear
gorical assumptions. to his students that the venture was a bad risk: that in the unlikely
The term “snapshot aesthetic” was coined to give a name to the case that some of them had the talent and will to be photographers
open-ended character of this imagery, so different from the famil¬ they would be better off working on their own, that they should
iar ideal of good pictorial design, with its taut assemblage of expect little from him except honesty, a dubious favor. Predictably,
interlocking shapes. Winogrand thought the label idiotic, and his refusal to interest himself in, or to feign interest in, the
pointed out correctly that the protot5T)ical snapshot was—at least sensibilities and ambitions of his students (as opposed to their
in intention—rigidly conceptual, even totemic. At a deeper level, work) made him a kind of hero to them; they had plenty of teachers
however, there was perhaps some justice to the term, for the who treated them kindly.
snapshooter and Winogrand agreed that the subject was every¬ Late in his life, when his confidence as a teacher had grown
more secure, and as he was less in need of the modest fees supplied that had been profoundly affected by the presence of the press,
by workshops and one-night stands of show-and-tell, his style at events that had been conceived and organized with the under¬
the lectern became more relaxed; his answers to naive questions standing that the press was an essential participant, and that
were less curt and combative, and were on occasion generous and often would not have teiken place in any form if it was understood
open, within the limits of his fierce pride. But to the end of his life that the press would not notice. Twenty years as a journalist had
he could be coldly contemptuous of the student who would not persuaded Winogrand that all scheduled events were designed to
distinguish the art from the artist: be reported, and that it would be more rewarding to photograph
Q: Why do you make art? them from the vantage point of that persuasion than to make
A: Ks a way of living. Ifs a way of passing through the time. photographs designed to suggest that the photographer was the
Q: Then 1 can’t really take your images seriously. chance witness of a spontaneous happening.
A: Look, so you like a lot of rhetoric. All there is is the pictures. I’m Some of the many superb pictures that Winogrand made on this
irrelevant to the pictures. You have a lot to learn, young man. The most ambitious of his projects can indeed be read as documents
artist is irrelevant once the work exists?^ that illustrate the thesis that most news is made news. But a lesser
As Winogrand became better known, he was forced to try to photographer, with eyes focused sharply on the theory rather than
explain in words matters that he knew could not be explained at on the nutty carnival of the event, might have succeeded better in
all, but that might with luck be demonstrated in pictures. His illustrating the point. Winogrand, inevitably, was drawn to the
comments on photography are sometimes brilliant, often rich in dramas that were not in the script, to the spontaneous improvisa¬
witty synecdoche, almost always challenging. They are also filled tions, the unforeseen contingencies, the minor individual crises
with contradiction, and ultimately frustrating. He did his best, that demonstrate—to our relief—that the plan was comically
most of the time, to answer truthfully unanswerable questions: inadequate, and that the event was after all a real event, even if
What made a picture good? What did his pictures mean? Were his not the one advertised.
intentions honorable? But he knew that his answers, even the The project, which later came to be known as Public Relations,
best, most epigrammatic of them, were not true but merely art— had begun well before the Guggenheim year, and continued long
like a photograph, a piece of the truth seen from one vantage afterward. Between 1969 emd 1976, Winogrand shot some 700 rolls
point, with edges that excluded most of the data. So he would of film at public and semipublic events, and made 6,500 eleven-by-
undermine one epigram with another, delivered with the same fourteen-inch proof prints, from which Tbd Papageorge (with some
Old Tfestament certainty, but not quite consistent with the first. guidance and very rare exercise of authority by Winogrand)
His method with words was perhaps consonant with his method selected the contents of the exhibition and the accompanying
with the camera: if he thought he had a chance for a picture he book.
would ‘"bang away at it,” and leave the editing for later. In speech In sustained visual vitality and in Chaucerian richness of inci¬
he seemed to pursue the same policy: if he sensed the chance for a dent, this prodigious collection seems beyond the scope of a single
principle, a bon mot, a formulation, a joke, he would try for it, and photographer. It is unlikely that an anthology of the best photo¬
then try again, confident that he still had other chances—still graphs by all the other photographers who made pictures bearing
plenty of frames on the roll. on the character of America’s public behavior during that period
would provide so lively and telling a document. And Winogrand
IN 1969 WINOGRAND received his second Guggenheim Fellow¬ gave us in addition the integrity of art—coherent sensibility and
ship, to photograph “the effect of the media on events.” It is not style.
clear whether he thought in the beginning that he could do quite The photographer and critic Gerry Badger found the Public
that, or whether he meant to say that he would photograph events Relations pictures “works of virtuosity—indeed, they perhaps
would rank as amongst the most formally adroit 35mm photo¬
graphs ever made,” but was more deeply interested in the way that
the photographer had made, from materials long weighted down
with conventional moral significance, the disinterested, private
political statement that life is more interesting than the theories
that purport to explain it.^^
Not all reviewers were persuaded. Michael Edelson thought
that he had seen better pictures in the reject box at the Associated
Press.22 Shelley Rice said that Winogrand “settled for a half-baked
series of images that express only the most hackneyed and super¬
ficial truisms about a very complex issue.”^^ A. D. Coleman found
the pictures basically indistinguishable from each other, and
Winogrand a photographer whose “professional and economic
allegiance is to the upper class; he’s received an enormous amount
of support from the corporate/government sector and the
museum/gallery network which is its right arm. He cannot afford
to bite the hand that feeds him.”^^
Winogrand was seldom visibly upset by the comments of pho¬
tography critics, whose response to his work was frequently puer¬
ile and occasionally vicious. He was not responsible, he said, for
the babblings of children. Only once did he seem genuinely disap¬
pointed by published criticism. Ironically, the piece in question, an
omnibus review in 1975 by Janet Malcolm,^® was not inhospitable
to Winogrand’s work, although she did associate it loosely with the
word snapshot, a confusion that he deplored. Unt3q)ically, he
responded (eight months later) and accused Malcolm of unprofes¬
sionalism, as though he could summon up no more damning
epithet. He also refused to allow reproduction of his pictures in the
book of her collected essays on photography.
It might be noted that 1975 was a bad year for Winogrand: in
March he stopped smoking and quickly gained fifty pounds,
apparently much of it around his neck, which proved to be the
evidence of a thyroid condition that required an operation during
the summer; in November, back on his feet, and photographing on
the sidelines of the 'Ibxas vs. Thxas A & M football game, he was
overrun by three players. A leg was broken and a kneecap shat¬ Garry Winogrand. Democratic National Convention. 1960
tered. His recovery was long and painful, and (worst of all)
required a degree of inactivity for which his prior experience had
not prepared him.
TO LIST IN SEQUENCE the conventionally significant events of Winogrand why he photographed: “How do I say it? The way I
Winogrand’s life is to construct what seems on paper a chronology would put it is that I get totally out of myself It’s the closest I
of troubles and failures, punctuated occasionally by underappreci¬ come to not existing, I think, which is the best—which to me is
ated successes. Those who knew him will be puzzled by the contra¬ attractive.”^®
diction between the bald facts emd their memory of the man as Nevertheless, Winogrand believed (or claimed) that he was
one who overflowed with vitality and ebullient good humor, who lucky, that he had been lucky to find photography, without which
seemed constantly hurrying forward to meet each of life’s double- he could have become a junkie or a criminal or a bum: “I never even
edged surprises, who in spite of his own experience never tired decided to be a photographer. I fell into it in a way, but when I fell
of praising marriage and family life, the virtues of hard work, into it I grabbed at it. Obviously, to me, I needed it desperately, and
dependability, professionalism. It is also true that when still a nothing has ever diverted me from that.”^'^ Winogrand said repeat¬
child in grade school he walked the streets of the Bronx late at edly that he had enjoyed whatever work he had done, for as long as
night in order to be alone, and that he suffered from duodenal he had been willing to do it.
ulcers when he was seventeen. Winogrand and Judy Tfeller were separated in 1969, and their
In his 1963 application for a Guggenheim Fellowship, marriage was annulled the next year. Late in 1969 he had met
Winogrand’s brief statement of plans reveals, calmly and with Eileen Adele Hale; they married in 1972, and in the following year
chilling frankness, the profound pessimism with which he viewed moved to Austin when Winogrand joined the faculty of the Uni¬
the world and the potential efficacy of his own work: “I look at the versity of'Ibxas.
pictures I have done up to now, and they make me feel that who we Winogrand said that he went to Tfexas because the place inter¬
are and what we feel and what is to become of us just doesn’t ested him; he felt there were pictures for him to make there.
matter. Our aspirations and successes have been cheap and petty. Earlier, as a visitor, he had made some of his most memorable
I read the newspapers, the columnists, some books, I look at the photographs in Tfexas, and it seemed that that place, with (we have
magazines (our press). They all deal in illusions and fantasies. I been led to believe) its public, extroverted style and love of display,
can only conclude that we have lost ourselves, and that the bomb would have been perfect material for him. But what we thought we
may finish the job permanently, and it just doesn’t matter, we have had reason to expect did not happen. Winogrand shot thousands of
not loved life. rolls during his Ifexas years, but most of the best of it was shot not
“I cannot accept my conclusions, and so I must continue this in Tfexas but in New York, or Washington, or at Cape Canaveral, or
photographic investigation further and deeper. This is my project.” in airports, while waiting for a plane that would take him some¬
One might explain the contradiction between the sanguine and where else. An exception must be made of the work in Stock
the melancholic Winogrands by assuming that either the pessi¬ Photographs, the book that grew out of a commission by the Fort
mism or the optimism was a pose—the first, perhaps, a way of Worth Art Museum to photograph the city’s Fat Stock Show and
refusing to deal with hard problems, or the second a way of Rodeo. The best of this work is extraordinary, and suggests a
protecting his friends and his children from the truth. Or one photographer whose concentration was fully intact, but it was
could posit that the optimist and the pessimist were both real, and shot during a period of a few days, during several visits between
that they held hegemony over different spheres of his life—the 1974 and 1977. The project had begun as an assignment for part
optimist in charge of his active life and the pessimist of meditation. of an exhibition that was already planned. It may have
By remaining almost perpetually active, and by almost never seemed to Winogrand almost like the old days, shooting for the
committing his private thoughts to writing, Winogrand kept the magazines.
optimist dominant, except for momentary lapses. A year before During most of his Tfexas years Winogrand was still working on
his death an interviewer for a German television program asked Public Relations; he was also preparing Women Are Beautiful for
publication, and he was teaching a full schedule, a responsibility
to which he gave his best efforts, in spite of his doubts about its
utility. Winogrand kept busy, and there was after all no real
justification for his admirers to expect what perhaps sub¬
consciously we expected: a body of work that would express the
character of a place that seemed from a distance somehow more
American, for better and worse, than any other place of the late
twentieth century—an open, fecund, reckless, desperate, mythic
place which, if it existed, seemed perfectly tailored to Winogrand’s
own personality and talents.
Doubtless there was no such place, but in that case there was
some other place that would have been interesting if only for
violating our simple preconceptions. In viewing the work shot in
Thxas—for the most part, a mountain of unedited proof sheets—it
is not easy to find evidence that he truly managed to engage that
place. We see, for the most part, the record of a photographer who
is peissing time between trips.
After five years Winogrand resigned from the university and
moved to Los Angeles. It is not clear whether he felt that he had
done what he had set out to do in Ttexas, or decided that he could
not. In the same year he received his third and last Guggenheim
Fellowship. Print sales had come to represent a significant portion
of the modest income he needed, and with the fees from occasional
workshops and lectures he could now live without teaching reg¬
ularly or doing commercial assignments. He could devote himself
to photographing Los Angeles, a prospect that he spoke of with
enthusiasm, as he had earlier of Tbxas.
Winogrand’s working pattern in California seems to have fol¬
lowed an almost mindless, strangely parochial routine that took
him back time after time to the same motifs; F£U"mers’ Market,
Hollywood Boulevard, Grauman’s Chinese Theater, Muscle
Beach—places where people in numbers could be seen out-of- Garry Winogrand. Eileen Adele Hale and Melissa Winogrand. c. 1979
doors. Surprisingly, the character of the life exhibited in these
places seems, in Winogrand’s pictures, of curiously low vitality.
Perhaps in compensation, Winogrand’s shooting became more
frenetic.
It is difficult to say precisely how much Winogrand shot in
California, but it is certain that the totals were prodigious. At the
time of his death in 1984 more than 2,500 rolls of exposed film
remained undeveloped, which seemed appalling, but the real humiliate him. Such frames of mind are inimical to open,
situation was much worse. An additional 6,500 rolls had been unprogrammed receptivity, as are exhaustion, eyestrain, inter¬
developed but not proofed. Contact sheets (first proofs) had been ruptions, ignorance, and schedules, under the pressure of which
made from some 3,000 additional rolls, but only a few of these bear the editor may, after looking at a thousand frames, have no clear
the marks of even desultory editing. Winogrand’s processing rec¬ idea of what he has seen, but only the sense of having been led
ords indicate that he developed 8,522 rolls of film during his Los down the road of disremembered experience. Afterwards, one can
Angeles years, while the backlog grew larger. Part of the unedited say with confidence only that the meaning of this mountain of last
work was shot in Tbxas; nevertheless, it would seem that during work remains a mystery, and suppose that a squad or a platoon of
his Los Angeles years he made more than a third of a million scholars will eventually sort it out by motif and date, and con¬
exposures that he never looked at. struct piece-by-piece a model of what this remarkable artist tried
One might reasonably ask whether a backlog of this magnitude to do, and what he achieved, in the last years of his life.
should be considered a technical problem or a psychological one. It In the meantime it seems to me that Winogrand was at the end
is difficult not to ask whether Winogrand truly expected ever to a creative impulse out of control, and on some days a habit with¬
edit this mountain of work, or whether in fact he wanted to. out an impulse, one who continued to work, after a fashion, like an
Tb expose film is not quite to photograph, and the photographer overheated engine that will not stop even after the key has been
who does not consider his finished pictures is like a pianist who turned off.
plays only on a silent keyboard. In the absence of proof, mistakes What seems a precipitous decline in much of Winogrand’s work
multiply, craft becomes theory, and good thinking passes for art. of the last years might be explained in several ways. One might
As Winogrand fell farther behind in the criticism of his own work say that his conception of photography was powerful and simple,
his technique deteriorated. The last few thousand rolls are and that like a materials-testing laboratory, or a theologian, he
plagued with technical failures—optical, chemical, and physical made his idea bear a greater and greater load, until it broke; or
flaws—in one hundred permutatioils. The most remarkable of that he was lost in Tbxas and in California—that his success had
these errors is his failure to hold the camera steady at the moment been based on an extraordinary sensitivity to patterns of public
of exposure. Even in bright sunlight, with fast shutter speeds, the gesture and rhythm that he had discovered in New York, his
negatives are often not sharp. It is as though the making of an native country, and that although he could transport this special
exposure had become merely a gesture of acknowledgment that knowledge abroad for quick trips, it would not take root there; or
what lay before the camera might make a photograph, if one had that his private life, for thirty-five years near the edge of disaster,
the desire and the energy to focus one’s attention. had become an issue on -which he -was unwilling to fail again,
The gargantuan excess of the late work makes it difficult even to whatever the cost to his work; or that he had perhaps been less
form a sense of its rough content, an approximate outline of its than well for years, since the operations of1975, with their atten¬
ambition. Tb attempt to view a third of a million pictures, or a dant prescribed drugs, and the unprescribed alcohol, to dull the
substantial portion of that, requires a sustained, concentrated pain and help pass the days of inactivity; or that he had done what
alertness to possibilities that cannot be anticipated. Such con¬ his talent and the circumstances had prepared him to do, after
centration is broken by a succession of contact sheets that are which he could only play the role of photographer, having no other
filled with crippling mechanical flaws, or by sheets that record options.
rolls of film exposed absentmindedly. In these circumstances the There were days of shooting during the last years when
editor’s attention is compromised by impatience, then by aggrava¬ Winogrand seems his familiar alert self, ffilly sensible to the
tion, then by something like anger, and the paranoid suspicion potential meanings of his subject, and to their possible formula¬
that he is the victim of a plot designed by the photographer to tion in a photograph. Those good days were often on trips away
R' ■

KODAK SAFETY FILM 5063 KODAK SAFETY FILM 5063

11
L ' Jj *

1 • 1

27 ->27A •->30 ^3
KODAK SAFETY FILM 5063 KODAK SAFETY FILM 5063

Garry Winogrand. Proof sheet (PD 142). c. 1982-83

 from Austin or Los Angeles, perhaps because he had momentarily
escaped obligations that were, however important to the life of the
man, extraneous to the work of the artist. Yet to a biographer the
most compelling of the late work would perhaps not be the work of
the good days—work with which we are familiar in principle—
but the dogged, repetitive, absentminded, oddly ruminative work
of the other days.
If Winogrand’s work of the last years is deeply flawed, it must be
added that to see it is to be struck hard by the uncompromising
relentlessness of it, and by the compulsive gambler’s curiosity that
allowed Winogrand to entrust the meaning of his life to pro¬
gressively unequal contests with the laws of chance. Much of the
late work seems willful, pointless, self-indulgent; still, it is in sum
deeply interesting, not only because immoderation is in itself
interesting, but because the pictures seem so much like unmedi¬
ated life: untidy, obscure in meaning, and generally graceless, but
always slightly unfamiliar, and therefore compelling. Many of the
’fFfflL'

last frames seem to have cut themselves free of the familiar claims
of art. Perhaps he had lost his way, or perhaps he was trying to
prepare a clean slate, the ground for a new beginning.
A third of a million pictures will provide data for any thesis, and
proof for none, except that of profligacy. Nevertheless, new con¬
cerns, or mutations of earlier ones, do seem recorded in the late
proof sheets. In Los Angeles Winogrand made thousands of pic¬
tures of people who were too far away to be described in detail,
perhaps to test how much could be conveyed in terms of posture,
stride, silhouette, autographic gesture. Often he would begin to
photograph an attractive woman—or a woman that his long¬
distance intuition told him was attractive—when she was still half
a block away. Surely he was interested in the formal photographic
problem: What was the greatest distance at which she could be
convincingly described? Perhaps, consciously or not, he was also
trying to make a photograph that would justly express the true
relationship between him and her.
In many late rolls Winogrand also appears to experiment with
ideas that revert to the abstracting tendencies that were cheirac-
teristic of advanced photography a half-century earlier. While
Garry Winogrand. Untitled (PC 361), c. 1980-81
photographing people crossing the street his attention is caught
Garry Winogrand. Los Angeles (PD 72), c. 1982-83 by the white lines that define the pedestrian crossings, or the

38
shadows cast by power poles or electric lines. His mind seems to
wander from his nominal subject, as though it cannot quite sup¬
port the interest he has claimed for it.
But perhaps the most unfamiliai’ of the late pictures are those
that approach the condition of simple portraits. These pictures,
generally of men, sometimes of aging couples, are remarkable not
for their formal panache or their wit but for the simplicity with
which they convey a sense of other lives, one might say other
failures, except for the fact that they are seen for a moment to be
alert, if only to the intrusion of an unknown photographer.
In Los Angeles Winogrand also made thousands of pictures
from his car, from the right-hand seat, while being driven by Tbm
Consilvio or another friend on his mysteriously dreamlike daily
rounds. As a pedestrian he had come to shoot at anything that
moved, and from the car everything moved. He seemed particu¬
larly unable to resist photographing old men, children in strollers, Garry Winogrand, Melissa Winogrand. c. 1982
banks, expensive or sporty cars, and of course women on the
sidewalk. Much of this work is difficult to comprehend, or perhaps
incomprehensible. If an explanation is necessary one might ven¬
ture that he photographed whether or not he had anything to
photograph, and that he photographed most when he had no
subject, in the hope that the act of photographing might lead him
to one. Such a thesis might (conceivably) explain the 150 rolls that
he shot at the Ivar, a strip theater in which a succession of women
perform the same dreary routine; suggesting that they might
show, then promising to show, then showing their pudenda to an
audience of men whom one might call pitiful, or pitiable, but who
might nevertheless have been worthy subjects for Chaucer or
Hogarth, or for Winogrand, if he had not during those months
been a part of the subject.
He also photographed his daughter Melissa, who was nine when
he died, in a spirit that seemed more closely allied to ritual than to
art. He photographed her each morning when he put her on the
school bus. The filmmaker Thy lor Hackford thought that the
intent of these pictures was a kind of magic, that they were tokens
of possession that would assure her safe return.^®
The technical decline of the last work was perhaps accelerated
by Winogrand’s acquisition, in 1982, of a motor-driven film
advance for his Leicas, which enabled him to make more expo-
sures with less thought. On the same day he acquired an eight- panied by his family, he was driven by Tom Consilvio to the Gerson
hy-ten-inch view camera, an instrument that proposes a diametri¬ Clinic in Tijuana, Mexico. He died there shortly after admission.
cally different approach to photography. The new camera was
perhaps an acknowledgment that his old line of thought was GARRY WINOGRAND was a man of extraordinau-y intelligence,
nearing the breaking point. He did not use the eight-hy-ten, hut he original sensibility, and modest learning who from his early lim¬
talked about using it, and about his notion of finding a small place ited successes, and from the examples of Evans and Frank, pro¬
on the Hudson River, not too far from New York, where he would jected without conscious hubris an. enormously ambitious con¬
do still lifes and portraits, and edit the work of the previous ception of photography’s potential. He discovered that the best of
quarter-century. Hackford recalls him saying that he was done his pictures were not illustrations of what he had known, but were
with the Leica, that he would now do something else. He also said new knowledge. New knowledge could not be called into existence
that he would remain in California only for the 1984 Olympics and by an act of will, but had to be discovered, through experiment and
would then go home, but perhaps he did not really expect to. Late the play of intuition, and luck. He learned “to live within the
in 1983, when the New York apartment that he had retained process” of photography, by which perhaps he meant to work in
during a decade of absence was converted to a tenant-owned terms of those formal values that derived from his own experience
cooperative, he gave up his place with what seemed a despairing of photography, and those philosophical values for which he could
fatalism. His friends protested that he could borrow money to buy find evidence on his contact sheets.
his apartment, and at least make a handsome profit by selling it It takes some effort now to remember clearly modern photog¬
after buying it at the advantageous tenant’s price. But he was raphy before Winogrand. The most adventurous work of his im¬
afraid of banks and could understand only that he was losing his mediate predecessors now seems in comparison almost simple,
home of almost thirty years. and has receded into the security of history, where problems seem
On February 1,1984, Winogrand visited a doctor, driven there in clear and solutions inevitable. Winogrand’s work in contrast
spite of his instinctive distrust of authorities by an insupportable remains difficult and problematic. It is possible that his vision of
itching that had spread from his arms to much of his body. The photography’s potential finally led him to problems too complexly
next day he was hospitalized for tests, and an exploratory opera¬ difficult to allow rational hope of success. Photography is based on
tion one week later revealed that he was suffering from cancer of the faith that there is a relation between aspect and meaning, but
the gall bladder, which could not be treated surgically or by other how does one describe the meaning of chaos without submitting to
conventional therapies. With the encouragement of his wife he it? Younger photographers may retreat a little from such Faustian
attended several group-therapy sessions based on the theories of ambition, in exchange for the reassurance of a greater measure of
Carl and Stephanie Simonton, in which progress depended in part control. Even so, Winogrand will have made their problem more
on patients’ ability to visualize their white blood cells. Patients difficult, for his work has demonstrated that photography can give
were also asked to complete forms in which they were to identify visible and permanent shape to experience so complex, unpredict¬
the various ways in which they had contributed to their illness. In able, subtle, and evanescent that one would have thought it
the first space Winogrand wrote that he had always considered uncommunicable.
himself a kind of unkillable weed, and that he had ignored signs of Winogrand insisted that he was not a philosopher, and did
his vulnerability. In the second space he wrote that he had not not accept the obligations that are incumbent on that role. He
resolved feelings of regret and fury at the failure of his first accepted responsibility only for the clarification, within the poten¬
marriage. In the third space he wrote the words “hopelessness and tials of photography, of his own experience. He constructed clever
helplessness about the world.” evasions to distance himself from the moral implications that
His condition deteriorated rapidly, and on March 19, accom¬ others might see in the world of his pictures. If these disclaimers
were designed to protect him from the wrath of those who would
behead the messenger, he disguised the fact well. It is more likely
that he was protecting himself from the dangerous, often disabling
condition of being simultaneously artist and critic. If he had with
words plumbed too deeply the meaning of his pictures—had
allowed analytic intelligence to look too insistently over the shoul¬
der of intuition—intuition might have been cowed. Winogrand’s
abhorrence of closure (his unwillingness to edit rigorously, his
inability to agree without cavil even to a tautology', his taste for
hyperbole—the self-evident untruth) was an expression of his
insistence on maintaining the hegemony of intuition. Tb discuss
the nonphotographic meanings of his work might make him too
consciously aware of those meanings, or even make him responsi¬
ble for those meanings.
He was of course responsible for those meanings. Somewhere
beneath his craftsman’s love for and fascination with the ways in
which photography revises and reconstructs the real world he
surely understood that the revision and reconstruction in his
pictures described his world. It is a world made up of energy,
ambition, flaming selfishness, desperate loneliness, and un¬
familiar beauty. It was his world, not ours, except to the degree
that we might accept his pictures as a just metaphor for our
recent past.
When we consider the heedless daring of his successes and his
failures we become impatient with tidy answers to easy questions,
and with the neat competence of much of what now passes for
ambitious photography. Winogrand has given us a body of work
that provides a new clue to what photography might become, a
body of work that remains dense, troubling, unfinished, and pro¬
foundly challenging. The significance of that work will be thought
by some to reside in matters of style or technique or philosophical
posture. There is no original harm in this misunderstanding, and
useful work may come of it, but it will have little to do with the
work of Garry Winogrand, whose ambition was not to make good
pictures, but through photography to know life.
Lee Friedlander. Garry and Melissa Winogrand. 1984
EISENHOWER YEARS
Frosh-Soph Rush, Columbia University, New York, 1950
Untitled c. 1953
Untitled, 1950s
 Floyd Patterson, o, 1954

48
Hugh Laing. c. 1953
 Louis Armstrong and Velma Middleton, c. 1954-55

50
Untitled, c, 1954-55
 Untitled, 1950s

52
El Morocco, 1955
New York, 1950s
Untitled, 1950s
Untitled, c, 1954
 iSS.-

Untitled, c, 1950
Untitled, c. 1953
Las Vegas. 1955 or later
Governor Adlai Stevenson, o, 1952
New York, n.d
 Floyd Patterson, c, 1954

62
Untitled, 1950s
Coney Island, New York, 1953
Coney Island, New York. o. 1960

65
Untitled, 1950s
El Morocco. 1955
El Morocco, 1955
Coney Island, New York, 1953
Untitled, c, 1953

. A

■VJr5
El Morocco, 1955
Jimmy Durante, c. 1954-55
THE STREET
Park Avenue, New York, 1959
 !iri(iA»4.'A-t

New York, n.d

R wj.
X
New York. 1961
New York, 1961
New York, 1961
New York, 1968
 New York, n,d

84
New York City 1968
New York City 1968
Minneapolis, n.d
New York City 1965
New York, before 1976

81“
 World's Fair, New York City. 1964

90
Central Park Zoo, New York City. 1967
 New York, 1961

92
New York, before 1976

9
American Legion Convention, Dailas, Texas, 1964
 rl/"
Los Angeles, California, 1969
New York. 1973
London, 1969
WOMEN
New York, 1961
 New York, 1961

102
New York. 1961
 New York, 1969 or earlier

104
New York, n.d
London, o, 1967
New York. 1965
 New York City 1967

108
New York. n,d,
Untitled, c. 1969
Untitled, c, 1969
 New York. 1971 or later

112
London, o, 1967
THE ZOO
Bronx Zoo, New York, 1963
Orangutan, c, 1963
New York, c. 1963
 New York City 1963

120
New York, 1963
Aquarium at Coney Island, 1962
Untitled, 1963
New York City 1963
New York, 1961
 Aquarium at Coney Island. 1962
\

126
Untitled, c, 1963
 New York, 1962

128
Bronx Zoo. 1963
 New York, c, 1962

130
Central Park Zoo, New York City 1962
ON THE ROAD
 >5

if*-

:-it’ ..,- . ^Ssrt’

\.
,.#.^5-#vi^ ■' .- -..i
■JS
V?y
"■niSj ■ * V.b ■ - ^
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. ’ " ''

M
’ <X. ^

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-I.’M
'*'-»3=J;' '*; - .-. «'..l
i.]i^^

3
J s.-
New Mexico, 1957
 Utah, 1964

136
Dallas, 1964
Los Angeles, 1955-60
Staten Island Ferry, New York. 1971
140
Las Vegas. 1957
Forest Lawn Cemetery, Los Angeles, 1964
Untitled, c, 1967

^4;'
 San Marcos, Texas, 1964

144
Texas State Fair, Dallas, 1964

i4r.
 Cape Cod. 1966

146
Dallas, 1964
 I Yi4S|W|BB

Near Carmel, 1964

148
Los Angeles, 1964
THE SIXTIES, ETC
Apollo 11 Moon Shot, Cape Kennedy, Florida, 1969
 Political Demonstration, New York, 1969

154
Peace Demonstration, Central Park, New York, 1969
 State Dinner, Apollo 11 Astronauts, Los Angeles, 1969

156
Centennial Ball, Metropolitan Museum, New York, 1969
 Mayor John Lindsay, Central Park, New York, 1969

158
Muhammad Ali-Oscar Bonavena Press Conference, New York, 1970

1 )Q
state Dinner, Apollo 11 Astronauts, Los Angeles, 1969
16'
Demonstration Outside Madison Square Garden, New York, 1968
Jesse Jackson Operation PUSH Dinner, Chicago. 1972

ib3
 1973

164
Centennial Ball, Metropolitan Museum, New York. 1969

1b;
Party, Norman Mailer's Fiftieth Birthday New York, 1973
Presidential Candidates’ Rally, Statehouse, Providence, R.l, 1971
 Centennial Ball, Metropolitan Museum, New York, 1969

I
j|

I
!
i

I
I
I
Opening, Alexander Calder Exhibition, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1969

1
 Peace Demonstration, Central Park, New York, 1970
[

170
 ■ Ttr.
Elliot Richardson Press Conference, Austin, 1973

VI
THE FORT WORTH
FAT STOCK SHOW
AND RODEO
Fort Worth, Texas, 1974
176
Fort Worth, Texas. 1974

177
Fort Worth, Texas, 1974-77
.f//

Fort Worth, Texas, 1974-77

179
Fort Worth, Texas, 1977
Fort Worth, Texas, 1974-77
Fort Worth, Texas. 1975
Fort Worth, Texas, 1974-77

18
Fort Worth, Texas, 1974-77
Fort Worth, Texas. 1974-77

185
 Fort Worth, T3xas, 1974-77

186
Fort Worth, Texas, 1974-77
 % ''

Fort Worth, Texas, 1974-77

188
Fort Worth, Texas, 1974-77
Fort Worth, Texas, 1974
Fort Worth, Texas, 1975

191
* i
AIRPORT

193
 rTU^--ta
“ 1

Untitled, n.d.

19f)
Los Angeles Airport 1964
San Francisco, 1964
 '■m4v0

Kennedy Airport, 1961

198
Los Angeles Airport, n.d
 Los Angeles Airport, 1964

200
Los Angeles Airport, n.d
 Los Angeles Airport, n,d,

202
Untitled, n.d
 Untitled, n,d,

204
Los Angeles Airport, n.d.

205
 Untitled, n.d.

206
TWA Terminal, Kennedy Airport, New York n,d.

207
Untitled, n,d,
New York City Airport c. 1972
 Los Angeles Airport, n,d,

210
Los Angeles Airport, n.d.
 Los Angeles Airport, n.d,

212
Austin, n,d
Los Angeles Airport n.d,

IIMEIMTAL. AlP*J*^*=
Los Angeles Airport, n.d.

215
 4

Los Angeles Airport, n,ci,

216
Untitled, n.d
 Los Angeles Airport n,d,

218
Untitled, n,d,

■0
UNFINISHED WORK
Santa Monica, California (PD 1848). c, 1982-83
224
Austin, Texas (13509), c, 1977-80

225
New York City (12494), c, 1976-80
Lulling, Texas (13684), c. 1977-80
 New York City (PD 474), c, 1982-83

lChart«1

' \n r-
Louisville, Kentucky (8551), 1972
 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles (PC 795), o, 1980-81

230
Art Laboe, Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles (PC 784), 1981

231
La Grange, Texas (13610). c. 1977-80
 New York City (PD 245), c, 1981-82

234
New York City (12611). c, 1978-79
New York City (PD 938), c, 1982-83
New York City (14162). c, 1980-82
Venice, California (PD151). c, 1982-83
Santa Monica Pier, California (PD 1690). c. 1982-83

239
 Los Angeles (PD 124), c, 1982-83

240
Los Angeles (PC 2091), c. 1980-81

241
 A^ ^
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V rTT^
yf>^ . ^ /^ ^ A y-v

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A

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5J*HS’5V. L'''‘JK5- ^V: -#iiJM®wik i^Hia^ r .44

Los Angeles (15339), c, 1978-79

242
Ivar Theater, Los Angeles (PC 2802). c. 1982-83

243
 Austin, Texas (13216), c. 1977-78

244
Maine (PC 197). c, 1980-81
 New York City (PD 285), c. 1981-82

24;
Los Angeles (PC 2971). c. 1980-81
CHRONOLOGY
Compiled by Sarah Anne McNear The Family of Man. The Museum of Modern
Art, New York, January 24-May 8, 1955
1928 (2 prints).
Born January 14, New York.
1956
1942 Daughter Laurie is born.
Attends Tbwnsend Harris High School, New
1957
York (spring term).
Exhibition:
1942-45 Seventy Photographers Look at New York.
Attends Christopher Columbus High School, The Museum of Modern Art, New York,
New York. November 27,1957-April 15,1958 (2 prints).

1946- 47 1958
Weather forecaster stationed in Georgia with Son Ethan is born.
Army Air Force.
1959
1947- 48 Exhibition:
Studies at City College of New York, although Photographer’s Choice. Workshop Gallery, New
not enrolled. York, April-May 1959.

1948 1960
Enrolls in General Studies painting class Photographs at Democratic National Conven¬
(taught by Henry Carnohan) at Columbia tion, Los Angeles.
University, New York (fall term). Begins to Exhibition:
photograph and work in student darkroom. Photographs by Garry Winogrand. Image Gal¬
lery, New York, January 1960.
1949
Studies with Alexey Brodovitch, on scholar¬ 1963
ship, at The New School for Social Research, Drops membership in American Society of
New York. Magazine Photographers.
Final separation from Adrienne.
1951 Exhibitions:
Under contract to Fix, Inc., New York. Five Unrelated Photographers. The Museum of
Receives first editorial assignment from Modern Art, New York, May 28—July 21,
Harper’s Bazaar. 1963 (45 prints).
Photographs for Collectors. The Museum of
1952
Marries Adrienne Lubow. Modern Art, New York, June 1963.
Joins American Society of Magazine Photog¬ Photography ’63. The George Eastman House
of Photography, Rochester, New York,
raphers.
October 1963-February 1964.
1954
1964
Under contract to Henrietta Brackman Asso¬
Receives John Simon Guggenheim Foundation
ciates, New York, continuing into 1955.
Fellowship to make “photographic studies of
1955 American life.”
Makes first photographic trip across the United Travels for five months, photographing in
States. Tfexas, Colorado, California, and at the New
Exhibition: York World’s Fair.

249
Exhibition: Hampshire; and the University of Missouri). Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Tbch-
The Photographer’s Eye. The Museum of Mod¬ nology. Tkaches workshops at Center of the
1968 Eye, Aspen, Colorado, and Phoenix College,
ern Art, New York, May 27-August 23,1964
Tkaches at The School of Visual Arts, New
(1 print). Arizona.
York, continuing until 1971.
Travels extensively in the United States.
1965 Exhibition:
Exhibitions:
Meets Judy Tbller. Eiue Photographers: Eikoh Hosoe, Ralph
Garry WinograruTs Photographs. Light Gallery,
Invited to, and attends. White House Festival of Eugene Meatyard, Josef Sudek, Garry
New York, April-May 1971.
the Arts. Winogrand, and John Wood. Sheldon Memo¬
Seen in Passing. Latent Image Gallery,
Exhibitions: rial Art Gallery, University of Nebraska Art
Houston, Texas, May-June 1971 (Robert
Contemporary Photographs from The George Galleries, Lincoln, May—June 1968 (cata¬
Frank, Lee Friedlander, Tod Papageorge,
Eastman House Collection. The George East¬ logue).
and Garry Winogrand).
man House of Photography, Rochester, New Garry Winogrand. Focus Gallery, San Fran¬
1969
York, January-February 1965.
Separates from Judy Tfeller. cisco, June 1971.
About New York: Night and Day. Gallery of Garry Winogrand. Institute of Design, Illinois
Receives second John Simon Guggenheim
Modern Art, New York. Institute of Tkchnology, Chicago, October-
Foundation Fellowship, to study “the effect of
1966 the media on events.” November 1971.
Divorce from Adrienne becomes final. The Animals is published by The Museum of
1972
Exhibitions: Modern Art, New York.
Finishes academic year in Chicago and returns
Contemporary Photography since 1950. Travel¬ Travels and photographs in Europe.
to New York.
ing exhibition prepared by The George East¬ Meets Eileen Adele Hale.
Marries Eileen Adele Hale.
man House of Photography in collaboration Exhibitions:
Tkaches at The Cooper Union for the Advance¬
with the New York State Council on the Arts. 10 Photographers. Organized by The Museum
ment of Science and Art, New York, as visit¬
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Eel- of Modern Art, New York, for the United
ing artist and lecturer.
lows in Photography. Philadelphia College of States Information Agency, United States
Tkaches workshops at Center of the Eye, Aspen,
Art, Pennsylvania, April—May 1966. Pavilion, Japan World Exposition, Osaka,
Colorado; Imageworks, Cambridge, Massa¬
Underground Gallery, New York, July 1966. 1969-70.
chusetts; and Kalamazoo Art Museum,
Toward a Social Landscape. The George East¬ New Photography U.SA. Traveling exhibition
Michigan.
man House of Photography, Rochester, New prepared for the International Program of
Receives a grant from the New York State
York, December 1966—February 1967 (cata¬ The Museum of Modern Art, New York (10
Council on the Arts.
logue). prints).
Exhibitions:
1967 The Animals. The Museum of Modern Art, New
Garry Winogrand. Toronto Gallery of Photog¬
Marries Judy Tfeller. York, October 24,1969-January 18,1970.
raphy, Canada.
Travels amd photographs in England, Scotland, Garry Winogrand. Media Center, Rice Univer¬
1970
and France. sity, Houston, Tkxas.
Marriage to Judy Tbller is annulled.
Ifeaches at Parsons School of Design, New York. Garry Winogrand. Light Gallery, New York,
Joins faculty of The Cooper Union for the
Exhibition: April-May 1972.
Advancement of Science and Art, New York,
New Documents. The Museum of Modern Art,
as adjunct professor.
New York, February 28—May 7,1967 (exhibi¬ 1973
Exhibition:
tion travels to Goucher College, Towson, Joins faculty of the University of Tkxas, Austin.
The Descriptive Tradition: Seven Photogra¬
Maryland; McMaster University, Connecti¬ Tkaches workshops at Imageworks, Cambridge,
phers. Boston University, Massachusetts,
cut; Cornell University, Ithaca, New York; Massachusetts, and Country Photography
March—April 1970.
Krannert Art Museum, Champaign, Illinois; Workshop, Woodman, Wisconsin.
Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecti¬ 1971 Lectures at Rhode Island School of Design,
cut; Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Moves to Chicago and joins the faculty of Providence; University of Massachusetts,
 Amherst; and Center of the Eye, Aspen, Col¬ 1977 Exhibitions:
orado. Public Relations is published by The Museum Garry Winogrand: Greece. Light Gallery, New
of Modern Art, New York. York, June 1979.
1974 Garry Winogrand: The Rodeo. Allan Frumkin
Lectures at The Museum of Modern Art, New
First portfolio, Garry Winogrand, published by Gallery Photographs, Inc., Chicago,
York.
Double Elephant Press. October-November 1979.
Photographs in Greece.
Daughter Melissa is born. Garry Winogrand: Texas and Greece. Orange
Tteaches workshops at Massachusetts College
Begins to photograph at The Fort Worth Fat Coast College Gallery, Costa Mesa, Califor¬
of Art, Boston; Kalamazoo Art Museum,
Stock Show and Rodeo. nia, October 1979.
Michigan; and Essex Photographic Work¬
1975 shop, Massachusetts.
1980
Receives commission to participate in the exhi¬ Exhibitions:
Stock Photographs: The Fort Worth Fat Stock
bition The Great American Rodeo, sponsored Garry Winogrand. The Cronin Gallery,
Show and Rodeo is published by the Univer¬
by The Fort Worth Art Museum, Ttexas. Houston, Ttexas, January 1977.
sity of Ttexas Press, Austin.
Receives grant from the National Endowment 18 CAPS Photographers. (Creative Artists Pub¬
Tteaches workshop at Massachusetts College of
for the Arts. lic Service Program) Soho Center for Visual
Art, Boston.
Women Are Beautiful is published by Light Artists, New York, June—July 1977.
Exhibitions:
Gallery Books, New York. Public Relations. The Museum of Modern Art,
Garry Winogrand. Galerie de Photographie,
Tteaches workshops at Massachusetts College of New York, October 18-December 11, 1977
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, April-June
Art, Boston, and Kalamazoo Art Museum, (exhibition travels to Reed College, Portland,
1980.
Michigan. Oregon; Laguna Gloria Art Museum, Aus¬
Bruce Davidson and Garry Winogrand. Mod-
Undergoes thyroid-gland surgery. tin, Ttexas; and Florida International Univer¬
erna Museet/Fotografiska Museet, Stock¬
Breaks leg at Ttexas vs. Ttexas A&M football sity, Miami).
holm, Sweden, March 1980.
game. Garry Winogrand. Light Gallery, New York,
Garry Winogrand, Larry Clark, and Arthur
Exhibitions: November, 1977 (rodeo and stock show work).
Tress. G. Ray Hawkins Gallery, Los Angeles,
Garry Winogrand: Women Are Beautiful. Light
1978 November 1980.
Gallery, New York, March 1975.
Receives third John Simon Guggenheim Foun¬ Garry Winogrand Retrospective. Fraenkel Gal¬
14 American Photographers. The Baltimore
dation Fellowship, to photograph in Califor¬ lery, San Francisco, November 1980—Janu¬
Museum of Art, Maryland, January-March
nia. ary 1981.
1975 (10 prints; catalogue).
Moves from Austin, Ttexas, to Los Angeles. Garry Winogrand. University of Colorado,
1976 Portfolio, Garry Winogrand, is published by Boulder.
Tteaches workshop at Essex Photographic Work¬ Hyperion Press, Ltd. 1981
shop, Massachusetts. Lectures at Yale University, New Haven. Tteaches fall semester. University of California
Exhibitions: Exhibitions: (Extension), Los Angeles.
The Great American Rodeo. The Fort Worth Art Garry Winogrand. Kline Common Gallery, Travels and lectures widely.
Museum, Ttexas, January-April 1976 (John Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New Photographs on the set of the film Annie.
Alberty, Tterry Allen, Ed Blackburn, George York, April 1978. Portfolio Women Are Beautiful is published by
Green, Mimi Gross Grooms, Red Grooms, Mirrors and Windows: American Photography RFG Publishing-Robert Freidus Gallery.
Joe Ferrell Hobbs, Andy Mann, Robert since 1960. The Museum of Modern Art, New Exhibitions:
Rauschenberg, Garry Winogrand, and Joe York, July 26-October 2,1978 (9 prints). Garry Winogrand. Light Gallery, New York,
Zucker).
April 1981.
Garry Winogrand. Grossmont College Gallery, 1979
Tteaches part-time at University of California, Robert Frank Forward. Fraenkel Gallery, San
El Cajon, California, March-April 1976.
Francisco, July-September 1981.
Garry Winogrand and Gus Kayafas. Panop¬ Los Angeles.
Tteaches workshop at Columbia College, Chi¬ Garry Winogrand. The Burton Gallery of Pho¬
ticon Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts,
tographic Art, Toronto, September 1981.
November-December 1976. cago.
Central Park Photographs: Lee Friedlander, Zabriskie Gallery, New York, December
Tod Papageorge, and Garry Winogrand. The 1984—January 1985.
Dairy in Central Park, New York, October- Garry Winogrand: A Celebration. Light Gal¬
December 1981. lery, New York. December 1984—January
1985.
1982
Travels to France and teaches workshops in 1985
Arles and Paris. Exhibition:
Lectures at Center for Creative Photography, Garry Winogrand: Photographs. Williams Col¬
Tucson, Arizona, and Mills College, San lege Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massa¬
Francisco. chusetts, February-March 1985.
Tfeaches Workshops at Masseichusetts College of
1986
Art, Boston, and Tkhoe Photographic Work¬
Exhibition:
shop, Nevada.
Little-known Photographs by Garry Wino¬
1983 grand. Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco,
Travels and photographs in Denmark and Swe¬ March-April 1986.
den.
Portfolio, 15 Big Shots: Photographs by Garry
Winogrand, published by Fraenkel Publica¬
tions, San Francisco.
Tfeaches workshop at Maine Photographic
Workshops, Rockport, and lectures widely,
including Museum of Photographic Arts,
San Diego, California.
Olympic Arts Festival poster is published.
Exhibitions:
Garry Winogrand: Big Shots. Photographs of
Celebrities, 1960-80. Fraenkel Gallery, San
Francisco, April-June 1983
Recent Gifts: Photographs from the Permanent
Collection. University Gallery, University of
Massachusetts, Amherst, September-
October 1983
Masters of the Street: Henri Cartier-Bresson,
Josef Koudelka, Robert Frank, and Garry
Winogrand. Museum of Photographic Arts,
San Diego, California, December 1983-
January 1984.

1984
Dies of cancer in Mexico, March 19.
Exhibitions:
Garry Winogrand: Recent Work. The Houston
Center for Photography, Ttexas, February-
March 1984.
Garry Winogrand: Women Are Beautiful.
1. Roberto Rossellini’s Open City was shown in Winogrand from the Society’s treasurer, April
New York in 1946, Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle 23,1963).
Thief inl949.
16. See note 10.
2. Ballet: 104 Photographs by Alexey Brodo- 17. Perhaps the idea was first formulated in
vitch. Tbxt by Edwin Denby (New York: J. J. October 1970 during a visit to the Visual Stud¬
Augustin, 1945). The photographs were taken ies Workshop. See Dennis Longwell, ed.,
between 1935 and 1939. “Monkeys Make the Problem More Difficult: A
3. Jackie Judge, “Letters,” Infinity (New York), Collective Interview with Garry Winogrand,”

November 1952, p. 12 Image (Rochester, New York), vol. 15, no. 2 (July
1972), p. 4.
4. Ronald H. Bailey, “The Real McCombe,”
18. Barbaralee Diamonstein, “Garry Wino¬
American Photographer (New York), December
grand,” in Visions and Images: American Pho¬
1978, p. 52.
tographers on Photography (New York: Rizzoli,
5. Louis Stettner, “French Photography Today,” 1981), p. 179.
Photo Notes (New York), June 1948, p. 2.
19. In 1959 Winogrand’s work was exhibited
6. Beaumont Newhall, “Chasseurs d’lmages,” (with that of Saul Leiter, David Vestal, Walter
Photo Notes (New York), June 1948, p. 3. Silver, and Harold Feinstein) at the Workshop
Gallery; in 1960 it was seen in a one-man show
7. Robert Doisneau, in Photo Notes (New York),
at Image Gallery.
June 1948, p. 1.
20. Slide presentation at the Center for Cre¬
8. Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Decisive Moment
ative Photography, the University of Arizona,
(Paris: Verve; New York: Simon and Schuster,
Tucson, February 4, 1982. Transcript in the
1952).
Department of Photography, The Museum of
9. Conversation between Bob Schwalberg and Modern Art, New York.
the author, March 7,1986.
21. Gerry Badger, “Recent Books: Public Rela¬
10. Tkped conversation between Tod Papa- tions,” The British Journal of Photography
george and Garry Winogrand, January 3 and 4, (London), March 10,1978, pp. 214—217.
1977.
22. Michael Edelson, “A Mosaic of Mediocracy,”
11. Conversation between Adrienne Winogrand Camera 35 (New York), vol. 23, no. 1 (January
and the author. May 27,1986. 1978), p. 22.

12. Letter from Henrietta Brackman to the 23. Shelley Rice, “A Look at the Emperor’s New
author, April 30,1986, quoting from her notes of Clothes,” The Soho Weekly News (New York),
about 1954. November 17,1977, p. 24.

13. Conversation between George Zimbel and 24. A. D. Coleman, “Slim Pickings in Hog
the author. May 28, 1986; letter from George Heaven,” Camera 35 (New York), vol. 26, no. 8
Zimbel to the author. May 7,1986. (August 1981), pp. 20-21.

14. See note 9. 25. Janet Malcolm, “Photography: Certainties

15. Winogrand’s membership in the ASMP was and Possibilities,” The New Yorker, vol. 51, no.

terminated in April 1963 for nonpayment of 24 (August 4,1975), pp. 56-59. The review also

dues and insurance premiums (Letter to discusses the work of Irving Penn.
26. U.S. Photography, 1983, a film made for
German television by Michael Engler, about
the work of eleven American photographers.

27. David Fahey, “Garry Winogrand,” G. Ray

Hawkins Gallery Photo Bulletin (Chicago), vol.
3, no. 8 (November 1980), p. 2.

28. Conversation between Thy lor Hackford and

the author, November 14,1986.
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Garry Winogrand [jwrtfolio]. New York: Double
The Animals. Afterword by John Szarkowski. Badger, Gerry. “Recent Books: Public Rela¬
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Public Relations. Introduction by Tod Papa-
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Interview with Barbaralee Diamonstein for (December 1968), pp. 138-139. Discussion of
Stock Photographs: The Fort Worth Fat Stock
Visions and Images. American Broadcasting The Animals.
Show and Rodeo. Essay by Ron Tyler. Austin:
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University of Tfexas Press, 1980.
tape: copy in the Department of Photography, Camera 35 (New York), vol. 26, no. 8 (August
Garry Winogrand. Introduction by Leo Rubin- The Museum of Modern Art, New York). 1981), pp. 20-21. Review of Stock Photographs
fien. El Cajon, California: Grossmont College,
with commentary on Public Relations.
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Bill Moyers. WNET/Channel Thirteen, May 7, sage.” Newsweek (New York), vol. 90, no. 19
Bishop. New York: Light Gallery Books, 1975.
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with Garry Winogrand.” Image (Rochester, Modern Art, New York).
Winogrand’s early work.
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King, Elaine A. “Garry Winogrand; Public Mathews, Margaret O. “Creativity with Bill
York), vol. 16, no. 4 (April 1967), pp. 16-17.
Relations" (unpublished review in the Depart¬ Moyers; The Photographer’s Eye.” American
ment of Photography, The Museum of Modern Society of Picture Professionals Newsletter (New Whelan, Richard. “Garry Winogrand.” Art
Art, New York). York), vol. 14, no. 1 (Spring 1982), pp. 4—5. News (New York), vol. 78, no. 9 (November 1979).
Review of exhibition at Light Gallery. Illustrated (New York), vol. 15 (September 11, land: The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1974.
1961), pp. 60-62. Pp. 66-69. Exhibition catalogue.
“Winogrand Makes 200 Facts Perfect Myste¬ Green, Jonathan, ed. The Snapshot. Millerten,
ries.” Modern Photography (New York), vol. 39, 1962 New York: Aperture, 1974. Pp. 84-93.
no. 7 (July 1975), pp. 40-41. Review of exhibition “Love in the Subway: A Photogaphic Essay by Photography Year 1974. New York: Time-Life
at Light Gallery. Garry Winogrand.” Eros (New York), vol. 1,
Books, 1974. Pp. 28-36. Selection of photo¬
no. 1 (1962), pp. 49-56. graphs from Women Are Beautiful.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS WITH
1964
PHOTOGRAPHS BY WINOGRAND 1975
“Fall Forecast: Fair.” Mothers-to-be & Infant Hahn, Emily. “Why Zoos?” The New York Times
(arranged chronologically)
Care, Fall 1964, pp. 24-33. Magazine, February 23,1975, pp. 14—15. Pho¬
1965 tographs from The Animals.
1954
‘What Makes Nick Run?” Pageant, May 1954, “What Makes a Good Picture?” Camera 35
1976
pp. 106-114. (New York), vol. 11, no. 4/5 (April-May 1965), The Great American Rodeo. Essay by Jay
Photography Annual 1954 (New York), pp. 66, pp. 43-47. Belloi. Austin: The Fort Worth Art Museum
80. and Tbxas Christian University Press, 1976.
1966
Photography Annual 1966 (New York), Pp. 36-45.
1955
Steichen, Edward. The Family of Man. New p. 178-183. 1977
York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1955. Lyons, Nathan. Toward a Social Landscape. “Garry Winogrand.” Camera Mainichi (Tokyo),
Pp. 118,134. New York: Horizon Press; Rochester, New no. 280 (January 1977), pp. 67-75.
Photography Annual 1955 (New York), pp. 38, York: The George Eastman House of Photog¬
raphy, 1966. Pp. 56-67. Exhibition catalogue. 1978
92-93,108-109,118,170-171.
“The World of Garry Winogrand.” Australian
1958 1968 Photography, April 1978, pp. 46—51. Photo¬
Harris, Eleanor. “The Stormy Success of Harry Five Photographers. Lincoln, Nebraska: graphs from Public Relations.
Belafonte,” Redbook (Dayton, Ohio), 1958, Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, 1968. Exhibi¬

pp. 44-47. tion catalogue.

“A Pro Tblls How to Choose a Lens for Each
1971
Spot.” Modern Photography (New York), vol. New Photography U.S.A. Introduction by John
22, no. 4 (April 1958), pp. 62-67. Szarkowski. Parma: Institute de Storia
Dell’Arte Universita di Parma, 1971. Cata¬
1959
“Is 35mm Best for Children?” Modern Photog¬ logue of exhibition prepared for the Interna¬
raphy (New York), vol. 23, no. 2 (February tional Fhogram, The Museum of Modern Art,

1959), pp. 62-67. New York.

1960 1972
Ehle, John. “A Minister’s Triumph.” Redbook Documentary Photography. New York: Time-

(Dayton, Ohio), vol. 114 (April 1960). Life Books, 1972. Pp. 189-195 (Chapter 5,

“Vigil by the Surf” Sports Illustrated (New “Critics of Complacency,” with Diane Arbus,

York), vol. 13 (October 3,1960), pp. 38-42. Robert Frank, and Lee Friedlander).

Robbins, Jahn and June. “The Minister’s Unac¬ “Photographs by Garry Winogrand.” Creative

ceptable Family.” Redbook (Dayton, Ohio), Camera (London), no. 102 (December 1972),

vol. 114 (December 1960). pp. 412-419.

1961 1974
14 American Photographers. Baltimore, Mary¬
Hay, John. “A Walk on the Great Beach.” Sports

257
1-
 THUS MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
Lily Auchincloss Ex Officio
William S. Paley
Edward Larrabee Barnes Edward 1. Koch
Chairman Emeritus
Celeste G. Bartos Mayor of the City of New York
Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd
Sid Richardson Bass Harrison J. Goldin
President Emeritus
H.R.H. Prinz Franz von Bayern** Comptroller of the City of New York
David Rockefeller
Gordon Bunshaft Joann K. Phillips
Chairman of the Board
Shirley C. Burden President of The International Council
Mrs. Henry Ives Cobb
Vice Chairman Thomas S. Carroll*
Donald B. Marron John B. Carter
President Marshall S. Cogan
Mrs. Frank Y. Larkin Gianluigi Gabetti
Vice President Miss Lillian Gish**
John Parkinson III Paul Gottlieb
Vice President and Treasurer Agnes Gund
Mrs. Melville Wakeman Hall
George Heard Hamilton*
Barbara Jakobson
COMMITTEE ON PHOTOGRAPHY
Sidney Janis**
Philip Johnson
John Parkinson III
Ronald S. Lauder
Chairman
John L. Loeb*
Robert B. Menschel
Ranald H. Macdonald*
Paul F. Walter
David H. McAlpin**
Vice Chairmen
Dorothy C. Miller**
J. Irwin Miller*
Arthur M. Bullowa
S. I. Newhouse, Jr.
Shirley C. Burden
Philip S. Niarchos
Mrs. Henry Ives Cobb
Richard E. Oldenburg
Wendy Larsen
Peter G. Peterson
Mrs. Ronald S. Lauder
Gifford Phillips
Pierre N. Leval
John Rewald**
Harriette Levine
David Rockefeller, Jr.
David H. McAlpin
Richard E. Salomon
Beaumont Newhall*
Mrs. Wolfgang Schoenborn*
William A. Turnage
Mrs. Constantine Sidamon-Eristoff
John C. Waddell
Mrs. Bertram Smith
Monroe Wheeler
Jerry I. Speyer
Mrs. Bruce Zenkel
Mrs. Alfred R. Stern
*Honorary Member
Mrs. Donald B. Straus
Walter N. Thayer Ex Officio
R. L. B. Tobin William S. Paley
Monroe Wheeler* Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd
Richard S. Zeisler David Rockefeller
*Trustee Emeritus Donald B. Marron
**Honorary Trustee Richard E. Oldenburg

259
 DtHOTOGRAPH CREDITS
IN THE CAPTIONS, pictures that were not Museum of Modern Art, New York, Gift of
printed during Winogrand’s lifetime are identi¬ Garry Winogrand, pages 14 top, 77,80-82,117;
fied by a negative number after the title. The Courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York,
prefix PD refers to negatives that were not page 19 top; Courtesy Sandra Weiner, page 17;
developed at the time of his death, and the pre¬ Courtesy Adrienne Winogrand, page 16; Cour¬
fix PC to negatives developed but not proofed; a tesy The Estate of Garry Winogrand, pages 24,
number with no prefix indicates work that was 35, 37, 38 top and bottom, 39, 195, 199,
developed and proofed, but not edited. 202-208, 210-217, 219, 223-247.
Photographic sources are listed alphabeti¬
cally below, followed by the number of the page
on which each illustration appears.

Courtesy Melinda Blauvelt, page 53; Courtesy

Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, Ari¬
zona, pages 28, 46-52, 54, 56—63, 66, 69-71,
73,78,79,138; Courtesy DDB Needham World¬
wide Inc., page 30; Courtesy The Estate of
Walker Evans, page 18; Courtesy Fraenkel Gal¬
lery, San Francisco, and The Estate of Garry
Winogrand, pages 19 bottom, 22 top and bot¬
tom, 25, 26 top, center, and bottom, 27, 29, 33,
55, 64, 65, 67, 68, 72, 83-90, 95-97, 102,
104-113, 118, 119, 123, 127, 139, 141, 143-148,
158, 160, 162, 164, 165, 167, 168, 171, 175-191,
196-198, 200, 201, 209, 218; The Museum of
Modern Art, New York, pages 13 bottom, 94;
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Gift
of Jeffrey Fraenkel in memory of Garry
Winogrand, page 93; The Museum of Modern
Art, New York, Gift of Lee Friedlander in mem¬
ory of Garry Winogrand, pages 15, 41; The
Museum of Modern Art, New York, Extended
loan from Mrs. James Hunter, pages 120,136,
140; The Museum of Modern Art, New York,
Purchased with funds provided by The Interna¬
tional Council, pages 91,129,131,137,142,149;
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Gift of
N. Carol Lipis, page 135; The Museum of Mod¬
ern Art, New York, The David H. McAlpin
Fund, pages 122, 125, 126, 128, 130; The
Museum of Modern Art, New York, Purchase,
pages 21,45,92,101,103,124,153-157,159,161,
163,166,169,170; The Museum of Modern Art,
New York, The Ben Schultz Memorial Collec¬
tion, Gift of Garry Winogrand, page 121; The

260
 continued from front flap

iJg 179 plates are works that have never before been
published; 'and the last section includes twenty-five pictures
chosen from the enormous body of work that Winogrand left
unedited at the time of his death in 1984.
In the essay the author, who knew the photographer well during
most of his career, describes the development of Winogrand’s pic¬
torial strategies during his years as a photojournalist, the increas¬
ing complexity of his motifs as he pursued more personal goals,
and the challenge posed for other photographers by the powerful
and distinctive authority of Winogrand’s best work, “with its manic
sense of a life balanced somewhere between animal high spirits
and an apprehension of moral disaster.”

JOHN SZARKOWSKI has been Director of the Department of

Photography at The Museum of Modern Art since 1962. In addi¬
tion to directing exhibitions and developing the Museum’s collec¬
tion of photographic prints, he is the author of numerous publica¬
tions, among them: The Photographer’s Eye (1964), Walker Evans
(1971), Diane Arbus (1972), Looking at Photographs (1973), Mirrors
and Windows: American Photography since 1960 (1978), The Work
of Atget (with Maria Morris Hambourg, 1981-85), and Irving Penn
(1984).

THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

11 WEST 53 STREET
NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10019

Distributed by New York Graphic Society BooksI

Little, Brown and Company, Boston

front cover: New Mexico, 1957

Printed in the United States of America