Garry Winogrand

In Winogrand’s unique approach to the act of photographing he put himself in the middle of the scene actively participating in the performance being played out by his, mostly unaware, subjects. He didn’t study framing through the lens and instead composed instantaneously, impulsively, improvisationally, as if he were making a kind of pictorial jazz piece. Working in a crowd, he brought the Leica to his eye—and dropped it away from his eye—so rapidly that, as the photographer, Tod Papageorge said, “people didn’t know whether they were being photographed or not, whether he even took the picture.”

Winogrand's photographs were exhibited widely during his lifetime, including Edward Steichen's The Family of Man at the Museum of Modern Art, Towards a Social Landscape at the George Eastman House, and the 1967 New Documents exhibition, curated by John Szarkowski at the Museum of Modern Art.  When he died suddenly at age 56, Winogrand left behind more than 10,000 rolls of film – more than a quarter of a million pictures and a quarter of his life’s works. These images capture a bygone era; the New York Mad Men, the early years of the Women’s Movement, the birth of American suburbs, and the glamour and alienation of Hollywood.