“… spreading Szarkowski’s view that Winogrand is the ‘central photographer of his generation.’
That claim can still make some people wince. To anyone conditioned to want every figure bolted into an ironclad composition, Winogrand’s images can look limp, slapdash — shots taken at the indecisive moment. They seem to lack a prevailing mood, leaving the eye to make its way among faces with canceled expressions or bodies deposited around the frame in eccentric ways. Rather than place his main figures in the foreground of a tautly arranged setting, Winogrand was content to see them sliced by the edges of the frame, or surrounded by acres of unexceptional space, or perched in the middle distance while some quizzical extra hogged center stage.” (in Time)
This was his strength and his weakness. By lessening the authorial intent, by arguing that the surface is all there is, he took away his own role. Ultimately he failed to move on from his brilliant start. And contradicting what is said above, his best pictures and sets are insanely authored. I wonder how many of his street shots were really worth something? It’s the work at the parties, the rodeo, the zoo, the picture of the house at the edge of oblivion that people remember.
One must be saying something. But not the same thing for too long. You start boring yourself and lose interest as I think happened to him.
Posted 2 years ago
