As part of the BPS’ education initiatives, we have launched a series called Master Class. Each month, we will feature a short biography of one “master” photographer.
Garry Winogrand
“Photography is not about the thing photographed. It is about how that thing looks photographed.“ – Garry Winogrand
“There is nothing as mysterious as a fact clearly described I like to think of photographing as a two way act of respect. Respect for the medium, by letting it do what it does best, describe. And respect for the subject, by describing it as it is. A photograph must be responsible to both. ” – Garry Winogrand
“...In the end, maybe the correct language would be how the fact of putting four edges around a collection of information or facts transforms it. A photograph is not what was photographed, it’s something else.” – Garry Winogrand
Garry Winogrand was born on January 14, 1928 in New York City, New York, USA. His parents, Abraham and Bertha, were immigrants from Budapest and Warsaw respectively and raised Winogrand and his sister in a then-predominantly Jewish neighbourhood in the Bronx. Abraham worked as a leather work in the garment factory and Bertha made neckties. Following his high school graduation in 1946, Winogrand joined the United States Army Air Force.
In 1947, Winogrand returned to New York City to study painting at City College of New York and then painting and photography at Columbia University in New York in 1948. Following this, he furthered his education with a photojournalism class in 1951, taught by Russian born photographer Alexey Brodovitch. You may remember Brodovitch for his stint as the art director of Harper’s Bazaar magazine from 1934 to 1958. He is also mentioned in the BPS Masterclass Article 13 on Irving Penn. During this time, Winogrand found work as a freelance photojournalist and advertising photographer. Around 1952, after an introduction from Edwin “Ed” Feingersh, he started as a freelance photographer with the Pix Publishing Agency. Feingersh, a protégé of Brodovitch and famous for his images of actress of Marilyn Monroe, was also a prolific photojournalist with a skill for producing beautiful photographs in seemingly impossible, low light conditions. The year 1952 also saw Winogrand getting married to Adrienne Lubeau, with whom he would have two children Laurie (1956) and Ethan (1958).
His work stint With Pix Publishing lasted until 1954, when Winogrand moved on to Brackman Associates. Two of his images would go on to appear in the 1955 Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) exhibition, The Family of Man. Four years later, Winogrand would have his own solo showing of work at the Image Gallery in New York. While this may have been his first showing, his first notable exhibition came in 1963. Returning to the MoMA in NYC, Winogrand’s work appeared in “Five Unrelated Photographers” with such luminaries as Minor White, George Krause, Jerome Liebling and Ken Heyman.
The 1960s also saw Winogrand photographing the city at the same time as some other famous contemporaries like Lee Frielander and Diane Arbus (see Masterclass Article 5). His wife Adrienne described being married to Winogrand as “being married to a lens”. Unfortunately this led to the pair separating in 1963. The divorce would not be finalised until 1966. But this period also saw some positives for him. In 1964, Winogrand was awarded with his first Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to travel for “photographic studies of American life”. In 1966, he exhibited at George Eastman House in Rochester, New York. This exhibition, entitled “Towards A Social Landscape”, featured the works of Winogrand, Lee Friedlander, Duane Michals, Bruce Davidson and Danny Lyon who was also the exhibition curator. In 1967, he would return to MoMA with Friedlander in another exhibition along with fellow contemporary, Diane Arbus. This influential 94-image exhibition, entitled “New Documents”, was considered radical for its time and was described as “representing a shift in emphasis” and “identifying a new direction in photography. It was further described as "photography that emphasized the pathos and conflicts of modern life presented without editorializing or sentimentalizing but with a critical, observant eye."
In 1967, Winogrand married a second time. This time, he exchanged vows with Judy Teller. However this would be a short lived union, ending in a split in 1969. Again, as with his first marriage, he had some professional positives to offset his personal negatives. This same year saw Winogrand publishing his first book of photographs, entitled “The Animals”. Shot at the Bronx Zoo and the Coney Island Aquarium, the book explored the interactions and connections between humans and animals in these environments. He also received his second Guggenheim Fellowship to continue exploring "the effect of the media on events" through the emerging phenomena of events created for the media. Accordingly, his work shifted to photographing public events from 1969 to 1976. This shift produced 6,500 prints to be curated by Papageorge for his solo exhibition at MoMA, as well as a book “Public Relations”.
The 1970s saw Winogrand supporting himself by teaching, first In New York and then at the Illinois Insitute of Technology in Chicago where he relocated in 1971-72. In the midst of this, Winogrand got married a third time to Eileen Adele Hale. The couple welcomed daughter Melissa in 1972. Winogrand then moved his family to Texas, after his stint in Chicago, and taught at the University of Texas at Austin. He stayed there from 1973 to 1978 when he moved to Los Angeles. It was here that Winogrand is said to have exposed around 8,522 rolls of film. In 1979, he would be awarded a third Guggenheim Fellowship which he put to use to travel the southern and western states to investigate the social issues of the day. And in 1980, he would produce another book called “Stock Photographs” which showed people in relation to each other as well as their show animals at the Fort Worth Fat Stock Show and Rodeo.
On February 1, 1984, Winogrand was sadly diagnosed with gallbladder cancer. He made the decision to immediately travel to the Gerson Clinic in Tijuana, Mexico to seek alternative treatment. Unfortunately, Winogrand passed on March 19, 1984 at the age of 56 in Tijuana. Reportedly he left behind around 2,500 unprocessed rolls of film, 6,500 processed but unproofed exposures and 3,000 rolls that were realised as contact sheets. This amounted to around 300,000 unedited images. Some of this large body of work has been exhibited posthumously by MoMA. In addition to this legacy, the Centre for Creative Photography houses an extensive archive of 20,000 fine and work prints, 20,000 contact sheets, 100,000 negatives and 30,500 35 mm colour slides. There are also a small number of Polaroid prints and several amateur and independent motion picture films. Some of his well-known work, along with some of the unpublished images, was recently included in a touring retrospective exhibition in 2013 along with the book, “Garry Winogrand (2013)”.
This is but a condensed biography. For further reading about Garry Winogrand and his “streetwise” work, please see the following internet resources:
AtGetPhotography Bio: http://www.atgetphotography.com/The-Photographers/Garry-Winogrand.html
Fraenkel Gallery Bio: https://fraenkelgallery.com/artists/garry-winogrand
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