Winogrand’s cop out

“… 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

“It’s the closest I come to not existing.”

His method is very jittery. It’s as if he is pretending not be taking photos at all. Like he is playing around with the camera, but it doesn’t look very convincing to me. Of course people on the streets are involved in their own thoughts and a lot can be done without notice. He actually shoots just as he brings it to his eye, and then acts as if something went wrong with the shot, or that it wasn’t very important at all. If need be he can be fairly confronting, you can tell that he isn’t backing away. The guy in the blue blazer is clearly wanting to confront him but Winogrand has a very absent minded presence. He seems harmless. He makes it as easy as possible for you to walk away.


Posted 2 years ago

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“Do you work everyday?”

“Yeah, sure.”


Posted 2 years ago

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The camera is at his face for the shortest period of time possible. The camera is very small, and very quiet. He is always smiling, always non-threatening. People do stop and turn around but that could be video camera that’s with him. He’s only a little sleazy.

“What’s happening?”

“I’m surviving.”


Posted 2 years ago

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During the first years photography bought him no income, and it can only be guessed that he lived by those unrecorded strategies known intuitively to indigent but ambitious youth.

Szarkowski on Winogrand in Winogrand: Figments From the Real World, p.15.


Posted 2 years ago

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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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© Adnan Chowdhury 2011