Garry Winogrand - Seeing Tings OOOIII

semilog said:
^----- which strikes me as preposterous and bordering on contemptuous, since a huge fraction of what made Winogrand Winogrand was his editing decisions.

It's comparable to Kenny G releasing a recoding of himself soloing over a Louis Armstrong recording, which he actually did. A type specimen of poor taste.
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I agree that is as much a part of it as taking the picture. How did they get there hands on his stuff?
 
cosmonaut said:
How did they get there hands on his stuff?
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Winogrand died of cancer at age 56. His archives are at the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Ariz., and he had taught at the University of Texas in Austin and the Art Institute of Chicago. Along with exhibitions at MoMA and Guggenheim and NEA grants, I suspect arrangements were made of what to do with his body of work before he passed away, or at least persons who valued his life's work would have gotten in touch with his family.

I read in one of his books that he was using a motor drive attached to his Leica M and shooting out a car window towards the end of his career (he wasn't the one driving). This may have contributed to burning through many more rolls of film.
 
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saxshooter said:
Winogrand died of cancer at age 56. His archives are at the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Ariz., and he had taught at the University of Texas in Austin and the Art Institute of Chicago. Along with exhibitions at MoMA and Guggenheim and NEA grants, I suspect arrangements were made of what to do with his body of work before he passed away, or at least persons who valued his life's work would have gotten in touch with his family.

I read in one of his books that he was using a motor drive attached to his Leica M and shooting out a car window towards the end of his career (he wasn't the one driving). This may have contributed to burning through many more rolls of film.
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Thanks for the info. I seem to remember hearing that once he went to the motor drive his work wasnt as good. That it speeded him by and he was in to big of a hurry? Not sure he true this is.
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I love Winogrand.

There is a gallery on 57th.street in Manhattan and the owner knew Garry and Lee Freidlander. He gave me a few cool stories. He used to catch Garry on 5th. and 57th. shooting without looking threw the viewfinder. Garry would get mad, proclaiming that he never shot from the hip, but this gallery owner swears he saw him shooting without looking through the finder.
 
I find the question raised by Semilog very interesting, maybe because I am such a lousy editor my self:

How much of a piece of work shot by Winogrand, but sorted out and edited by others (we are not talking small writing edition, but picking a very small portion of the pictures), is Winogrand work?
 
sanmich said:
I find the question raised by Semilog very interesting, maybe because I am such a lousy editor my self:

How much of a piece of work shot by Winogrand, but sorted out and edited by others (we are not talking small writing edition, but picking a very small portion of the pictures), is Winogrand work?
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it's all Winogrand's work. he's just not around to show us which ones he thinks are best.
 
I'd rather have someone selecting on his behalf, than not see any of his unpublished work. I'd also happily buy a book of the post death contact sheets.
 
I ordered the book. I may spend $$ to travel to SFMOMA to see the exhibit.

Once I've looked at the work I'll be able to have an opinion if those photographs are Wingrand's work.

The last chapter of "Figments from the Real World" was edited by John Szarkowski. His chapter title is "Unfinished Work". I'm comfortable with that adjective.
 
hepcat said:
In case you hadn't seen Winogrand's "highly regarded piece of machinery," Stephen photographed it and has it on his website.

Winogrand's Leica M4

It's polished, all right. ;)
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Very interesting piece of history for sure, surely it should be in a Museum, but I'm sure he's glad it's still out there shooting :) thanks for the link ...
 
There is an older thread pointing to a PDF that I found more interesting regarding Winogrands photography. Initially I felt he was just a happy snapper with some occasional luck, but he has a way of thinking about pictures and visuals that goes deeper than what I've found from most other photographers. Reading that interview opened up a few windows in my mind when I really tried to understand what he means...

The RFF thread:
http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=39222

Direct link to the pdf:
http://2point8.whileseated.org/uploads/winogrand-optimized.pdf
 
IMHO GW was misunderstood by his contemporaries and he will continue to be misunderstood and under appreciated.

Accounts written by his students communicate their frustration, respect and admiration with GW. Like all of us he had flaws and problems. But in the I believe his work will stand the test of time.

One thing is indisputable. He accomplished something few of us achieve. He spent his time doing exactly what he loved to do.
 
willie_901 said:
IMHO GW was misunderstood by his contemporaries and he will continue to be misunderstood and under appreciated.

Accounts written by his students communicate their frustration, respect and admiration with GW. Like all of us he had flaws and problems. But in the I believe his work will stand the test of time.

One thing is indisputable. He accomplished something few of us achieve. He spent his time doing exactly what he loved to do.
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I'll give you that he did what he wanted to do and enjoyed it. I have read with great interest those who analyze his work... finding fascinating hidden meanings... links between the subjects and elements of his photos... finding deeper meaning. What really fascinates me is that he, in his own words, has said essentially that there is no meaning other than what he sees in the prints after he's printed them. Fascinating.

So, how is someone to make a coherent relational statement about the guy's work when he says there weren't any relationships photographed? Apparently each image he shot is stand-alone and he didn't really even know what drew him to make a specific photo other than he saw it and liked it.

Interesting stuff, huh?
 
hepcat said:
I'll give you that he did what he wanted to do and enjoyed it. I have read with great interest those who analyze his work... finding fascinating hidden meanings... links between the subjects and elements of his photos... finding deeper meaning. What really fascinates me is that he, in his own words, has said essentially that there is no meaning other than what he sees in the prints after he's printed them. Fascinating.

So, how is someone to make a coherent relational statement about the guy's work when he says there weren't any relationships photographed? Apparently each image he shot is stand-alone and he didn't really even know what drew him to make a specific photo other than he saw it and liked it.

Interesting stuff, huh?
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To me, how the artist/photographer intends and interprets their work doesn't have to be the same as how viewers interpret what they see. I post photos regularly and am always delighted to see how and what different people see in my photos, which is often quite different from my initial intent in making the photo as well as any post-visualization interpretation that I heeded in processing and finishing it.

Garry Winogrand's photos are intransigently just what they are. How we interpret what they are is up to us. I see different things in them, over time, as I visit and revisit them. They don't change ... ;-)

G
 
Godfrey said:
To me, how the artist/photographer intends and interprets their work doesn't have to be the same as how viewers interpret what they see. I post photos regularly and am always delighted to see how and what different people see in my photos, which is often quite different from my initial intent in making the photo as well as any post-visualization interpretation that I heeded in processing and finishing it.

Garry Winogrand's photos are intransigently just what they are. How we interpret what they are is up to us. I see different things in them, over time, as I visit and revisit them. They don't change ... ;-)

G
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One of the magical things about photographs is the image conveys meaning... always. How that's interpreted is, of course, dependent on the viewer, their life experiences, and their perspective. It's always interesting to wonder if the photographer "meant" what you think he meant, or if he intended the image to convey the message you see.

Some photographers further that guessing game by remaining mute on their images and letting the images speak for themselves. I find Winogrand interesting because of his repeated claims that the images have no meaning other than being a vehicle for him to use to learn from photography.

I'm reading "The Ongoing Moment" by Geoff Dyer, and he spends a lot of energy describing the relationships of the people in one of Winogrand's more famous street images, and having read Winogrand's interviews about how he worked it's hard to imagine that he saw any of that when he made the image. He may have, unconsciously or intuitively of course. He may have intended to convey exactly what Dyer describes... but it's just hard to ascribe what Dyer suggests knowing how Winogrand described how he worked.

Some photographers have relational elements in their images, and certainly across a body of their work. I particularly enjoy your work, Godfrey, because it has those elements. Those things emerge rather quickly as you look at images and the body of work. Others, like Winogrand, never seem to have anything unifying about their work other than their basic style and how prolific they are.

Of course, that doesn't make their work any less valuable or less interesting; I just find writers who search for greater meaning in the work of those photographers an interesting quest.
 
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