Garry Winogrand
Garry Winogrand (1928–1984) was an American photographer renowned for his street photography that documented the energy and social dynamics of mid-20th-century urban America, particularly in New York City.[1][2] Born in the Bronx to a working-class Jewish family, Winogrand briefly studied painting at Columbia University before turning to photography after serving in the U.S. Air Force during World War II and attending City College of New York.[3][4] His career as a freelance photographer began in the early 1950s, focusing on candid black-and-white images made with a 35mm camera, often employing tilted angles and wide-angle lenses to convey motion and spontaneity in everyday scenes.[5][6] Winogrand's prolific output included over 6,500 rolls of undeveloped film at his death, reflecting an obsessive drive to photograph public life, from zoo animals to political events and street encounters, resulting in influential books such as The Animals (1969) and Public Relations (1977).[7] His work earned acclaim for its raw depiction of American optimism and unease, with major exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in 1969 and a comprehensive retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2014 that drew from his vast archives.[8][1] Despite leaving much of his archive unedited, Winogrand is regarded as one of the 20th century's preeminent photographers for pioneering a visceral, democratic approach to street photography that prioritized volume and serendipity over perfection.[1][3]Biography
Early life and education
Garry Winogrand was born on January 14, 1928, in the Bronx, New York City, to Jewish immigrants Abraham Winogrand from Budapest, Hungary, and Bertha Winogrand from Warsaw, Poland.[9][10] He grew up in a working-class household with his sister Stella amid the urban environment of the Bronx, which later influenced his street photography.[11][12] At James Monroe High School, Winogrand developed an early interest in art, sparked by exposure to the vibrant street life and cultural stimuli of New York.[12] Following high school, he served 18 months in the U.S. Air Force during the final stages of World War II, where he began experimenting with photography around 1945 using a Leica camera acquired during service.[13][14] Discharged in 1947, Winogrand utilized the G.I. Bill to pursue formal education, first studying painting at City College of New York for one year (1947–1948).[15] He transferred to Columbia University (1948–1951), continuing with painting while acquiring practical skills in photographic development and printing.[15] In 1951, he shifted focus to photography by enrolling in classes at the New School for Social Research, studying under Alexey Brodovitch, whose emphasis on intuitive vision shaped Winogrand's nascent approach to image-making.[15][16]Personal life and relationships
Winogrand married Adrienne Lubeau in 1952, following their meeting around 1949.[9] The couple had two children: daughter Laurie, born in 1956, and son Ethan, born in 1958.[9] Their marriage deteriorated amid increasing stress from 1960 onward; Lubeau moved out with the children in 1962, and the divorce was finalized in 1966, granting her full custody.[9] In 1967, Winogrand married Judy Teller, whom he had met in 1965.[9] The relationship ended in separation in 1969, with the marriage annulled the following year.[9] A letter from Teller highlighted the difficulties of their domestic life, portraying Winogrand's home environment as tumultuous for his partners.[17] Winogrand wed Eileen Hale in 1972, after meeting her in 1969 during the dissolution of his second marriage.[9] They had one child together, daughter Melissa, born on December 5, 1974.[9] Lubeau later described marriage to Winogrand as akin to being wed to his camera lens, underscoring how his relentless photographic pursuits often overshadowed family commitments.[18] By the early 1980s, Winogrand reportedly mourned his estrangement from his children amid these serial unions and professional demands.[19]Later years and death
In the 1970s, Winogrand shifted focus westward, relocating to Texas in 1973 to pursue extended photographic projects, including extensive documentation of the Fort Worth Fat Stock Show and Rodeo, which informed his 1980 publication Stock Photographs: The Fort Worth Fat Stock Show and Rodeo.[20] This period marked a departure from his New York-centric street work, emphasizing rural and suburban American spectacles with his characteristic snapshot energy.[21] By the early 1980s, he had moved to Los Angeles, continuing to produce images of urban life and teaching sporadically, though his output remained voluminous and largely unprocessed.[22] Winogrand's health deteriorated rapidly in 1984. On February 1, he received a diagnosis of gallbladder cancer.[9] Seeking alternative treatment, he traveled to the Gerson Clinic in Tijuana, Mexico, accompanied by his wife Eileen and three children.[10] The illness progressed swiftly, and he died there on March 19, 1984, at the age of 56.[19] His death left an immense, disorganized archive, including thousands of undeveloped rolls of film estimated at over 10,000, which required posthumous curation by institutions like the Center for Creative Photography.[23]Photographic Career
Style, technique, and equipment
Winogrand employed a Leica M4 rangefinder camera, typically fitted with a 28mm wide-angle lens, which enabled him to capture broad, dynamic scenes from close range.[12][24] He handled the equipment with speed and minimal adjustment, raising it to eye level swiftly before lowering it to avoid detection by subjects, facilitating candid shots amid urban movement.[24] His technique emphasized prolific, impulsive shooting over meticulous framing, producing an estimated one million images across his career, many of which remained undeveloped or unprinted at his death in 1984, including 2,500 rolls of film and 4,000 processed rolls without contact sheets.[12][24] Winogrand often delegated film processing and editing to assistants, prioritizing the act of exposure as the core of his process rather than post-production refinement.[12] He approached subjects aggressively, positioning himself inches away to seize unposed moments and genuine expressions, as evidenced in works like New York, ca. 1962, where proximity intensified emotional authenticity without prior acquaintance.[6] Stylistically, Winogrand adopted a snapshot aesthetic that diverged from traditional composition, incorporating tilted horizons, skewed angles, and layered elements to convey the chaotic energy of postwar American life.[12] His images featured multiple interpretive viewpoints and subliminal order amid visual clutter, redirecting documentary impulses toward personal exploration of public exuberance and tension rather than narrative persuasion.[20] This approach transformed street photography into an active, participatory pursuit, embedding the photographer's kinetic urgency into scenes of crowds, events, and individuals, often unifying observer and observed in a shared agitation.[24]Major themes and subjects
Winogrand's photography predominantly explored the vitality and contradictions of post-World War II American society, using candid street shots to capture urban energy, social interactions, and cultural shifts from the 1950s through the 1970s. His images often depicted the frenetic pace of New York City streets, suburban expanses, and cross-country travels, emphasizing spontaneous moments of human activity that conveyed both optimism and underlying anxiety in everyday life.[25][26] A central subject was women in public spaces, photographed with a focus on their physical presence, fashion, and integration into urban environments, as compiled in his 1975 book Women Are Beautiful, which featured 85 black-and-white images from the 1960s and 1970s. These works highlighted women's allure amid the era's gender dynamics but drew criticism for perceived objectification, particularly as the women's rights movement gained traction.[27][26] Winogrand also frequently documented public events, including political conventions like the 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, demonstrations, and media-saturated gatherings, illustrating the performative aspects of American public life and the influence of spectacle on social behavior.[28][26] Other recurring motifs included animals and zoos, as in his 1969 book The Animals, which portrayed human-animal interactions at institutions like the Bronx Zoo to underscore themes of captivity and observation, and eccentric scenes such as people driving with monkeys or nude runners in streets, reflecting the absurdity and diversity of mid-century cultural expressions.[25][26] Through these subjects, Winogrand employed a wide-angle lens and rapid shooting to prioritize surface chaos and unfiltered reality over composed narratives, prioritizing the raw "effect of media on events" and societal flux.[28]New York City work (1950s–early 1970s)
Winogrand commenced his extensive street photography in New York City in the mid-1950s, following studies at the New School under Alexey Brodovitch and initial commercial work. His early images, such as El Morocco, New York (1955), portrayed nightlife venues and social interactions amid the city's postwar economic boom, emphasizing candid glimpses of public behavior and fashion. These photographs employed a 35mm Leica camera for handheld, spontaneous captures, often resulting in tilted frames that mirrored the disorientation of urban movement.[1][16] By the 1960s, Winogrand's Manhattan-focused oeuvre documented the era's social dynamism, including pedestrians on crowded avenues, elegantly attired women, business districts, and leisure scenes in Central Park. He photographed diverse subjects— from affluent elites to emerging countercultural figures—highlighting tensions between prosperity and unease, as in shots of antiwar demonstrators and political rallies. A 1964 Guggenheim Fellowship supported his documentation of American life, yielding images from events like the New York World's Fair, where he captured spectacles of technological optimism and human spectacle. His approach prioritized volume over perfection, exposing thousands of rolls of film annually to seize fleeting expressions of city vitality.[29][30][25] Into the early 1970s, Winogrand continued probing New York's public spaces, with series on the Central Park Zoo (The Animals, published 1969) revealing anthropomorphic parallels between animal behaviors and human society. Inclusion in the Museum of Modern Art's 1967 New Documents exhibition, alongside Lee Friedlander and Diane Arbus, affirmed his influence in observational street photography, distinguishing it from staged or purely journalistic modes. These works collectively amassed over 10,000 prints from the period, underscoring his relentless pursuit of the city's unfiltered essence before his increasing travels in the mid-1970s.[20][1]Travels, Texas, and later projects (1970s–1980s)
In 1973, Winogrand relocated to Austin, Texas, accepting a position as artist-in-residence and professor in the Department of Art at the University of Texas at Austin, where he taught photography from 1973 to 1978.[9] During this time, he documented everyday life in Austin through street photography, capturing the city's social dynamics amid its growth as a university hub and state capital.[31] His Texas residency also involved annual visits to the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo from 1974 to 1977, yielding over 100 images of livestock auctions, rodeo competitions, and rural spectacles that emphasized human-animal interactions and commercial energy; these formed the basis for his 1980 book Stock Photographs: The Fort Worth Fat Stock Show and Rodeo.[10] [32] Parallel to his Texas work, Winogrand advanced personal projects rooted in earlier Guggenheim-funded explorations. In 1975, he self-published Women Are Beautiful, a slim volume of 85 photographs taken primarily on city streets, portraying women in candid, often flirtatious public poses; the title essay asserted his view that "whenever I’ve seen an attractive woman on the street I’ve done my best to photograph her," prioritizing visual appeal over narrative context.[33] The following year, 1977 saw the release of Public Relations, drawn from a 1969-initiated series on media-orchestrated events like galas, protests, and political gatherings, where Winogrand critiqued how staged spectacles distorted authentic social behavior through wide-angle distortions and off-kilter framing.[34] That same year, he traveled to Greece to photograph its landscapes and populace, extending his interest in cultural spectacles beyond American subjects.[14] By 1978, Winogrand departed Texas for Los Angeles, shifting focus westward amid personal transitions.[14] His third Guggenheim Fellowship in 1979 supported renewed travels across the southern and western United States, producing thousands of exposures on urban sprawl, leisure activities, and interpersonal encounters that echoed his earlier cross-country drives but reflected 1980s economic shifts.[35] These late efforts, including unprinted rolls discovered posthumously, underscored his relentless output—estimated at over 6,500 rolls of undeveloped film by 1984—prioritizing volume over editing, though health issues from thyroid cancer limited completion before his death that year.[36]Exhibitions and Institutional Presence
Solo exhibitions
Winogrand's first solo exhibition, Photographs by Garry Winogrand, opened at the Image Gallery in New York in 1959.[10] This early show featured his street photography from New York City and marked his emergence as a distinct voice in postwar American photography. During the 1960s and 1970s, Winogrand held several solo exhibitions that highlighted specific bodies of work. In 1969–1970, The Animals was presented at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, focusing on photographs taken at zoos and emphasizing his interest in human-animal parallels.[9][20] Additional solo shows occurred in 1972 at venues including Light Gallery in New York, Toronto Gallery of Photography, and Rice University in Houston.[9] In 1975, Women are Beautiful debuted at Light Gallery in New York, showcasing his controversial series on women in public spaces.[9] The following year, Public Relations appeared at MoMA from October to December 1977, drawing from his Guggenheim-funded documentation of political and social events.[9][20] Posthumous exhibitions have sustained and expanded Winogrand's visibility. Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco mounted eleven solo shows starting in 1980, including explorations of his lesser-known works.[20] A major retrospective, Winogrand: Figments from the Real World, opened at MoMA in 1988, curated by John Szarkowski and encompassing over 175 prints from across his career.[9][20] The touring exhibition Garry Winogrand, organized by SFMOMA and the National Gallery of Art, premiered at SFMOMA from March 9 to June 2, 2013, featuring approximately 300 photographs, including many previously unpublished images from his extensive archive of undeveloped film.More recent solos include Garry Winogrand: Color at the Brooklyn Museum in 2019, centered on his color slide photography, and Garry Winogrand: Man of the Crowd at the San Diego Museum of Art from 2024 to 2025.[20][37]
| Year | Title | Venue |
|---|---|---|
| 1959 | Photographs by Garry Winogrand | Image Gallery, New York [10] |
| 1969–1970 | The Animals | MoMA, New York [9] |
| 1975 | Women are Beautiful | Light Gallery, New York [9] |
| 1977 | Public Relations | MoMA, New York [9] |
| 1988 | Winogrand: Figments from the Real World | MoMA, New York [20] |
| 2013 | Garry Winogrand | SFMOMA, San Francisco (premiere) |