Garry Winogrand
Born(1928-01-14)January 14, 1928
The Bronx, New York City, US
DiedMarch 19, 1984(1984-03-19) (aged 56)
Tijuana, Mexico
OccupationStreet photographer
Spouses
  • Adrienne Lubeau
  • Judy Teller
  • Eileen Adele Hale
Children3

Garry Winogrand (January 14, 1928 – March 19, 1984) was an American street photographer,[1] known for his portrayal of U.S. life and its social issues, in the mid-20th century. Photography curator, historian, and critic John Szarkowski called Winogrand the central photographer of his generation.[1]

He received three Guggenheim Fellowships[1] to work on personal projects, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts,[1] and published four books during his lifetime. He was one of three photographers featured in the influential New Documents exhibition at Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1967 and had solo exhibitions there in 1969,[2] 1977,[1] and 1988.[3] He supported himself by working as a freelance photojournalist and advertising photographer in the 1950s and 1960s, and taught photography in the 1970s.[1] His photographs featured in photography magazines including Popular Photography, Eros, Contemporary Photographer, and Photography Annual.[4]

Critic Sean O'Hagan wrote in 2014 that in "the 1960s and 70s, he defined street photography as an attitude as well as a style – and it has laboured in his shadow ever since, so definitive are his photographs of New York";[5] and in 2010 that though he photographed elsewhere, "Winogrand was essentially a New York photographer: frenetic, in-your-face, arty despite himself."[6] Phil Coomes, writing for BBC News in 2013, said "For those of us interested in street photography there are a few names that stand out and one of those is Garry Winogrand, whose pictures of New York in the 1960s are a photographic lesson in every frame."[7]

In his lifetime Winogrand published four monographs: The Animals (1969), Women are Beautiful (1975), Public Relations (1977) and Stock Photographs: The Fort Worth Fat Stock Show and Rodeo (1980). At the time of his death his late work remained undeveloped, with about 2,500 rolls of undeveloped film, 6,500 rolls of developed but not proofed exposures, and about 3,000 rolls only realized as far as contact sheets being made.[8]

Early life and education

Winogrand's parents, Abraham and Bertha,[1] emigrated to the U.S. from Budapest and Warsaw. Garry grew up with his sister Stella in a predominantly Jewish working-class area of the Bronx, New York, where his father was a leather worker in the garment industry, and his mother made neckties for piecemeal work.[8][9]

Winogrand graduated from high school in 1946 and entered the U.S .Army Air Force. He returned to New York in 1947 and studied painting at City College of New York and painting and photography at Columbia University, also in New York, in 1948.[4] He also attended a photojournalism class taught by Alexey Brodovitch at The New School for Social Research in New York in 1951.[2][4]

Career

Winogrand worked as a freelance photojournalist and advertising photographer in the 1950s and 1960s. Between 1952 and 1954 he freelanced with the PIX Publishing agency in Manhattan on an introduction from Ed Feingersh, and from 1954 at Brackman Associates.[8]

Winogrand's beach scene of a man playfully lifting a woman above the waves appeared in the 1955 The Family of Man exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York which then toured the world to be seen by 9 million visitors.[4][10][11][12] His first solo show was held at Image Gallery in New York in 1959.[4] His first notable exhibition was in Five Unrelated Photographers in 1963, also at MoMA in New York, along with Minor White, George Krause, Jerome Liebling, and Ken Heyman.[13]

In the 1960s, he photographed in New York City at the same time as contemporaries Lee Friedlander and Diane Arbus.[14]

In 1964 Winogrand was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to travel "for photographic studies of American life".[4]

In 1966 he exhibited at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York with Friedlander, Duane Michals, Bruce Davidson, and Danny Lyon in an exhibition entitled Toward a Social Landscape, curated by Nathan Lyons.[15][16] In 1967 his work was included in the "influential" New Documents show at MoMA in New York[1] with Diane Arbus and Lee Friedlander, curated by John Szarkowski.[17]

His photographs of the Bronx Zoo and the Coney Island Aquarium made up his first book The Animals (1969), which observes the connections between humans and animals. He took many of these photos when, as a divorced father, accompanying his young children to the zoo for amusement.[18]

He was awarded his second Guggenheim Fellowship in 1969[1] to continue exploring "the effect of the media on events",[19] through the then novel phenomenon of events created specifically for the mass media. Between 1969 and 1976 he photographed at public events,[3] producing 6,500 prints for Papageorge to select for his solo exhibition at MoMA, and book, Public Relations (1977).

In 1975, Windogrand's high-flying reputation took a self-inflicted hit. At the height of the feminist revolution, he produced Women Are Beautiful, a much-panned photo book that explored his fascination with the female form. "Most of Winogrand’s photos are taken of women in either vulgar or at least, questionable positions and seem to be taken unknown to them," says one critic. "This candid approach adds an element of disconnect between the viewer and the viewed, which creates awkwardness in the images themselves."[20]

He supported himself in the 1970s by teaching,[1] first in New York. He moved to Chicago in 1971 and taught photography at the Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology[8] between 1971 and 1972. He moved to Texas in 1973 and taught in the Photography Program in the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas at Austin between 1973 and 1978.[8][21] He moved to Los Angeles in 1978.

In 1979 he used his third Guggenheim Fellowship[1] to travel throughout the southern and western United States investigating the social issues of his time.[8][22][23]

In his book Stock Photographs (1980) he showed "people in relation to each other and to their show animals"[24] at the Fort Worth Fat Stock Show and Rodeo.

Szarkowski, the Director of Photography at New York's MoMA, became an editor and reviewer of Winogrand's work.

Personal life

Winogrand married Adrienne Lubeau in 1952. They had two children, Laurie[1] in 1956 and Ethan[1] in 1958. They separated in 1963 and divorced in 1966.

"Being married to Garry was like being married to a lens," Lubeau once told photography curator Trudy Wilner Stack. Indeed, "colleagues, students and friends describe an almost obsessive picture-taking machine."[25]

Around 1967 Winogrand married his second wife, Judy Teller.[26] They were together until 1969.[27]

In 1972 he married Eileen Adele Hale, with whom he had a daughter, Melissa.[25][1][28] They remained married until his death in 1984.[27]

Death and legacy

Winogrand was diagnosed with gallbladder cancer on February 1, 1984, and went immediately to the Gerson Clinic in Tijuana, Mexico, to seek an alternative cure ($6,000 per week in 2016).[29][30] He died on March 19, at age 56.[1] He was interred at Mount Moriah Cemetery in Fairview, New Jersey.

At the time of his death his late work remained largely unprocessed, with about 2,500 rolls of undeveloped film, 6,500 rolls of developed but not proofed exposures, and about 3,000 rolls only realized as far as contact sheets being made.[8] In total he left nearly 300,000 unedited images.

The Garry Winogrand Archive at the Center for Creative Photography (CCP) comprises over 20,000 fine and work prints, 20,000 contact sheets, 100,000 negatives and 30,500 35 mm colour slides as well as a small number of Polaroid prints and several amateur and independent motion picture[31] films.[32] Some of his undeveloped work was exhibited posthumously, and published by MoMA in the overview of his work Winogrand, Figments from the Real World (2003).

Yet more from his largely unexamined archive of early and late work, plus well known photographs, were included in a retrospective touring exhibition beginning in 2013 and in the accompanying book Garry Winogrand (2013).[3] Photographer Leo Rubinfien who curated the 2013 retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art felt that the purpose of his show was to find out, "...was Szarkowski right about the late work?” Szarkowski felt that Winogrand's best work was finished by the early 1970s. Rubinfien thought, after producing the show and in a shift from his previous estimation of 1966 to 1970, that Winogrand was at his best from 1960 to 1964.[33]

All of Winogrand's wives and children attended a retrospective exhibit at the San Francisco Art Museum after his death. On display was a 1969 letter from Judith Teller, Winogrand's second wife:

But my analyst bill is not even relevant at this point. What is extremely relevant is the money you owe the government in back taxes. Your inability to pay the rent on time. Your constantly running out of money. Your credit rating. And most of all, your flippant, irresponsible, nonsensical attitude toward all these very real problems. (‘I’ll wait till the government catches up with me. Why should I pay them any money now?’) You seem incapable of exercising your mind in any cogent way.[34]

Szarkowski called Winogrand the central photographer of his generation.[1] Frank Van Riper of the Washington Post described him as "one of the greatest documentary photographers of his era" but added that he was "a bluntspoken, sweet-natured native New Yorker, who had the voice of a Bronx cabbie and the intensity of a pig hunting truffles."[25] Critic Sean O'Hagan wrote in The Guardian in 2014 that in "the 1960s and 70s, he defined street photography as an attitude as well as a style – and it has laboured in his shadow ever since, so definitive are his photographs of New York";[5] and in 2010 in The Observer that though he photographed elsewhere, "Winogrand was essentially a New York photographer: frenetic, in-your-face, arty despite himself."[5] Phil Coomes, writing for BBC News in 2013, said "For those of us interested in street photography there are a few names that stand out and one of those is Garry Winogrand, whose pictures of New York in the 1960s are a photographic lesson in every frame."[35]

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

Exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2013.

Group exhibitions

Collections

Winogrand's work is held in the following public collections:

Awards

Publications

Publications by Winogrand

The cover of Figments from the Real World.

Publications paired with others

Contributions to publications

Films

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Grundberg, Andy (March 21, 1984). "Garry Winogrand, Innovator in Photography". The New York Times. Retrieved January 31, 2015.
  2. ^ a b c "The Animals" (PDF). Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved January 31, 2015.
  3. ^ a b c Woodward, Richard (May 13, 2013). "Garry Winogrand and the Art of the Opening". The Paris Review. Retrieved January 31, 2015.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g "Garry Winogrand". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Retrieved December 26, 2014.
  5. ^ a b c O'Hagan, Sean (October 15, 2014). "Garry Winogrand: the restless genius who gave street photography attitude". The Guardian. Retrieved January 17, 2015.
  6. ^ O'Hagan, Sean (April 18, 2010). "Why street photography is facing a moment of truth". The Observer. Retrieved February 15, 2015.
  7. ^ Coomes, Phil (March 11, 2013). "The photographic legacy of Garry Winogrand". BBC News. Retrieved January 17, 2015.
  8. ^ a b c d e f g Andy Greaves. "Andy Greaves Photography Blog – Gary Winogrand". Archived from the original on April 26, 2012. Retrieved November 29, 2011.
  9. ^ "Michael Hoppen Gallery – Garry Winogrand". Archived from the original on November 29, 2011. Retrieved November 28, 2011.
  10. ^ Steichen, Edward; Sandburg, Carl; Norman, Dorothy; Lionni, Leo; Mason, Jerry; Stoller, Ezra; Museum of Modern Art (New York) (1955). The family of man: The photographic exhibition. Published for the Museum of Modern Art by Simon and Schuster in collaboration with the Maco Magazine Corporation.
  11. ^ Hurm, Gerd; Reitz, Anke; Zamir, Shamoon, eds. (2018), The family of man revisited : photography in a global age, London I.B.Tauris, ISBN 978-1-78672-297-3
  12. ^ Sandeen, Eric J (1995), Picturing an exhibition : the family of man and 1950s America (1st ed.), University of New Mexico Press, ISBN 978-0-8263-1558-8
  13. ^ "Five Unrelated Photographers". The Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved April 22, 2019.
  14. ^ Peres, Michael (2014). The Concise Focal Encyclopedia of Photography: From the First Photo on Paper to the Digital Revolution. CRC Press. p. 116. ISBN 9781136101823.
  15. ^ a b Lyons, Nathan (1966). Toward a Social Landscape: Bruce Davidson, Lee Friedlander, Garry Winogrand, Danny Lyons, Duane Michals. New York, NY: Horizon Press. OCLC 542009.
  16. ^ a b Grimes, William (September 1, 2016). "Nathan Lyons, Influential Photographer and Advocate of the Art, Dies at 86". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved September 8, 2020.
  17. ^ "Garry Winogrand – Bio". Archived from the original on November 4, 2011. Retrieved November 29, 2011.
  18. ^ "Museum of Contemporary Photography". www.mocp.org. Retrieved April 21, 2019.
  19. ^ Winogrand, Garry (1977). Public Relations. New York, NY: Museum of Modern Art. ISBN 0-292-72433-0.
  20. ^ "Winogrand's Women Are Beautiful". www.worcesterart.org. Retrieved April 21, 2019.
  21. ^ O.C. Garza. "Class Time with Garry Winogrand" (PDF). Retrieved November 28, 2011.
  22. ^ "Garry Winogrand". Artnet. Retrieved November 29, 2011.
  23. ^ "American Suburb X – introduction to Garry Winogrand for 'Streetwise – A Look at Garry Winogrand' article". Retrieved November 29, 2011.
  24. ^ Winogrand, Garry (1980). Stock Photographs: The Fort Worth Fat Stock Show and Rodeo. Minnetonka, MN: Olympic Marketing Corp. ISBN 0-292-72433-0.
  25. ^ a b c Van Riper, Frank. "Camera Works: Photo Essay". www.washingtonpost.com. Retrieved April 22, 2019.
  26. ^ "Judy Teller, Wife of Garry Winogrand, New York City". portlandartmuseum.us. Retrieved April 21, 2019.
  27. ^ a b "Garry Winogrand: All Things are Photographable". American Masters. March 13, 2019. Retrieved April 21, 2019.
  28. ^ Winogrand, Garry; John Szarkowski (2003). figments from the real world. Museum of Modern Art, New York. ISBN 0-87070-635-7. Archived from the original on April 26, 2012. Winogrand and Judy Teller were separated in 1969, and their marriage was annulled the next year. Late in 1969 he had met Eileen Adele Hale; they married in 1972
  29. ^ "The Gerson Clinic in Mexico". Gerson Institute. Retrieved January 17, 2019.
  30. ^ Jerry Saltz (August 10, 2014), [1] New York Magazine.
  31. ^ Ruoff, J. K. (1991). Home Movies of the Avant-Garde: Jonas Mekas and the New York Art World. Cinema Journal, 6–28.
  32. ^ Michael David Murphy. "Winogrand Archives". Retrieved November 29, 2011.
  33. ^ Loos, Ted (May 2, 2013). "Revisiting Some Well-Eyed Streets". The New York Times. Retrieved August 23, 2018.
  34. ^ Woodward, Richard B. (May 13, 2013). "Garry Winogrand and the Art of the Opening". Retrieved April 22, 2019.
  35. ^ Coomes, Phil (March 11, 2013). "The photographic legacy of Garry Winogrand". BBC News. Retrieved January 17, 2015.
  36. ^ "Retrospective". Fraenkel Gallery. Retrieved September 9, 2020.
  37. ^ "Celebrities 1960 – 1980". Fraenkel Gallery. Retrieved September 9, 2020.
  38. ^ a b Grundberg, Andy (December 23, 1984). "Photography View; Life Seized on the Fly". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved September 9, 2020.
  39. ^ "Twenty Seven Little Known Photographs by Garry Winogrand". Fraenkel Gallery. Retrieved September 9, 2020.
  40. ^ "Major Garry Winogrand Retrospective Opens at the Museum of Modern Art" (PDF). Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved January 31, 2015.
  41. ^ "Garry Winogrand ", San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Accessed November 7, 2014.
  42. ^ "Garry Winogrand", National Gallery of Art. Accessed November 7, 2014.
  43. ^ "Garry Winogrand", Metropolitan Museum of Art. Accessed November 7, 2014.
  44. ^ "Garry Winogrand", Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume. Accessed November 7, 2014.
  45. ^ "Brooklyn Museum: Garry Winogrand: Color". www.brooklynmuseum.org. Retrieved October 10, 2019.
  46. ^ Cotter, Holland (July 3, 2014). "No Moral, No Uplift, Just a Restless 'Click': 'Garry Winogrand,' a Retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum". The New York Times. Retrieved December 28, 2014.
  47. ^ "No. 20" (PDF). Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved January 31, 2015.
  48. ^ Gefter, Philip (July 9, 2007). "John Szarkowski, Eminent Curator of Photography, Dies at 81". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved September 8, 2020.
  49. ^ "Was John Szarkowski the most influential person in 20th-century photography?". The Guardian. July 20, 2010. Retrieved September 8, 2020.
  50. ^ Kramer, Hilton (July 23, 1978). "Cover: Photographs by Helen Levitt and Marl: Cohen / Picture credits, Page". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved September 8, 2020 – via NYTimes.com.
  51. ^ "Garry Winogrand," Art Institute of Chicago, https://www.artic.edu/collection?artist_ids=Garry+Winogrand
  52. ^ "America Seen". George Eastman Museum. Archived from the original on December 9, 2000. Retrieved September 1, 2016.
  53. ^ "Garry Winogrand (American, 1928–1984)". Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved February 8, 2015.
  54. ^ "Houston, Texas, 1977 from Women are Better than Men". Whitney Museum of American Art. Retrieved June 25, 2015.
  55. ^ "Figments from the Real World". Retrieved July 6, 2020.

Further reading

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