Frosh-Soph Rush, Columbia University, New York 1950, Garry Winogrand Winogrand exemplifies the most basic photographic characteristic: he says, ‘look, I was there and I saw this’. But this isn’t shouted, it is whispered. But in this photo he does the other thing that photographers do, because their art is limited by a frame, and more importantly limited to tenths and hundreths of a second, he has turned the meaning of the photo inside out. Instead of ecstasy, instead of a crowd high together, joyous, we see a black hole falling on teenagers. They scream at the coming agony; their fear, uncertainty, acceptence are etched into their faces. Even here, Winogrand shoots a little of kilter, kinetically, we are meant to feel that we are lucky to see this at all. We were lucky that he was so quick witted. As with most conmen, we are meant to think that he is doing us a favour. And he is. He has created a terrible meaning out of a split second, out of the inoccuous. For a photographer, a great challenge is the lack of visible emotion in day to day life. People are usually walking around with blank stares, grim grimices, subtle, uninteresting gestures. People packed together is an opportunity for the photographer. Then, people get excited, angry, scared, expressive. It is far easier to say something at those moments. Yet, what sets this picture above is that nearly all the participants are showing extreme, complementary emotion. The hands, those very oddly shaped things we carry around, are well spaced out out, palms are visible. Getting a shot like this is not easy. Often something is wrong crowd pictures: someone is looking bored, another is bending over to get their bag, and so shots of many people together lack wholeness or singularity. But this was one of Winogrands preoccupations, hor to order a mass of things into meaning in a wide frame. What is also critical is the highly structured or layered way he has created linked nodes of attention in this photo. We are drawn to the triangle at the centre of the frame with the nodes being the two fearful boys and the ball above them. It creates a beautiful coherence.

Frosh-Soph Rush, Columbia University, New York 1950, Garry Winogrand

Winogrand exemplifies the most basic photographic characteristic: he says, ‘look, I was there and I saw this’. But this isn’t shouted, it is whispered.

But in this photo he does the other thing that photographers do, because their art is limited by a frame, and more importantly limited to tenths and hundreths of a second, he has turned the meaning of the photo inside out. Instead of ecstasy, instead of a crowd high together, joyous, we see a black hole falling on teenagers. They scream at the coming agony; their fear, uncertainty, acceptence are etched into their faces. Even here, Winogrand shoots a little of kilter, kinetically, we are meant to feel that we are lucky to see this at all. We were lucky that he was so quick witted. As with most conmen, we are meant to think that he is doing us a favour.

And he is. He has created a terrible meaning out of a split second, out of the inoccuous.

For a photographer, a great challenge is the lack of visible emotion in day to day life. People are usually walking around with blank stares, grim grimices, subtle, uninteresting gestures. People packed together is an opportunity for the photographer. Then, people get excited, angry, scared, expressive. It is far easier to say something at those moments. Yet, what sets this picture above is that nearly all the participants are showing extreme, complementary emotion. The hands, those very oddly shaped things we carry around, are well spaced out out, palms are visible. Getting a shot like this is not easy. Often something is wrong crowd pictures: someone is looking bored, another is bending over to get their bag, and so shots of many people together lack wholeness or singularity. But this was one of Winogrands preoccupations, hor to order a mass of things into meaning in a wide frame.

What is also critical is the highly structured or layered way he has created linked nodes of attention in this photo. We are drawn to the triangle at the centre of the frame with the nodes being the two fearful boys and the ball above them. It creates a beautiful coherence.


Posted 2 years ago

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