Winogrand redux

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gns

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Organizing the big Winogrand retrospective for MOMA, John Szarkowski looked hard at the pile of unfinished late work and concluded that Garry's photographic wheels had come off, so to speak. Very little of the work was exhibited in the show and he wrote about his struggles with it in the catalog.

Now, photographer/writer/curator Leo Rubinfien has revisited the unedited photographs and apparently come away with a different view.

The show opens in just a few weeks...
http://www.sfmoma.org/about/press/press_exhibitions/releases/920

And there's a big book too...
http://yalepress.yale.edu/book.asp?isbn=9780300191776

I'm excited to see this.
 
"One reason that Winogrand is only now receiving the full retrospective treatment already devoted to peers of his era, including Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, and Robert Frank, is that any truly comprehensive consideration of his life's work requires contending with the practical and ethical issues surrounding the vast archive he left behind," says O'Toole. "In the absence of explicit instructions from him regarding how he wanted his work to be handled after he was gone, its posthumous treatment has been the subject of ongoing debate and raises provocative questions about the creative process and its relationship to issues specific to the medium."

"Some argue that what was left behind should be left alone, and that no one should intrude upon the intentions of an artist," adds Rubinfien. "But the quantity of Winogrand's output, the incompleteness with which he reviewed it, and the suddenness of his death create a special case in which the true scope of an eminent photographer's work cannot be known without the intervention of an editor."


I imagine for these reasons there was a lot of anticipation about what was going to come out and as a result, expected A LOT. I truly believe that Winogrand is one of the most difficult to interpret photographers out there and he was all over the place. To really try and figure him out would have been a huge challenge. When I first heard of this collection of undeveloped film being analyzed, I thought "man, I would love to be the guy developing, printing, and editing that stuff", but realize now that the enormous stress of doing it would be too overwhelming given the expectations of it.

I think you have to analyze it in context and given that fact that he is not here anymore leaves a lot of gaps in interpretation, no matter how well you "think" you know him. I have shot maybe 1/34280238 of the photos he has taken and still if someone went through my negatives and printed off my best 10, I bet they would hit 1/10 of them at best. Interpretation and perception is a bitch. I don't trust anyone writing about his new work.
 
J.R.

Yep, those are the issues. I believe Rubinfien understands Winogrand pretty well and I think he'll come up with something interesting. But I guess no matter who undertakes this kind of exercise or what they conclude, it will always raise the question, what would Winogrand have done?
 
The show officially opens today. I went to the member's preview and lecture by Tod Papageorge on Thursday and would strongly urge you all to see it. If you are out of reach of the bay area, it will travel to DC and Europe next year.

This may be the show that MOMA(NY) should have done. The previously unseen photos (and there are a lot of them, spanning his entire career) and the over-all presentation present a depth to his work and a cohesiveness that wasn't really there in Szarkowski's show. Whereas the MOMA show (and catalog) had organized the work more or less along divisions of subject themes (zoo, rodeo, etc), the current show presents a more continuous flow of work. In doing that, it pretty much skips over Winogrand's books. To me, this show seems more aligned with the little Grossmont College book that Winogrand did in 1976 (or the posthumous Man in the Crowd), than with the 4 more well-known titles he published.

The new book also looks great (still getting through it) with something like 400 plates and several essays (55 pages by Leo Rubinfien alone). Get it.

Cheers,
Gary
 
Leo is a fine photographer himself. Only problem I see, as Winogrand would have put it, he put film away after the shot it, to be developed and printed sometime later, so his emotional connection would be severed. He often said that sometimes he no recollection of making certain images.

"Photographers mistake the emotion they feel while taking the picture as judgment that the photograph is good."

“If I was in a good mood when I was shooting one day, then developed the film right away,” he told a class, “I might choose a picture because I remember how good I felt when I took it.” “Better to let the film ‘age,’ the better to grade slides or contact sheets objectively”.

Garry Winogrand
 
After realizing that some shots that I felt strongly about did not trigger any responses and others which I thought were no so special, received quite positive feedback, I think he was quite right about his statement.

But who in the digital age is waiting to download his memory cards until he or she forgot the pictures ...😉 ?
 
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