Planning to buy that expensive out-of-print Gary Winogrand book. Well don't.....

[Hjortsberg]

Today I spoke with the nice Getty Museum photo curator lady and she says that the San Francisco Art (?) Museum is opening a HUGE Winogrand retrospective in 2 to 3 years. They are developing and printing many of his mythic 2,500 rolls of undeveloped film he left when he died.

I'd imagine the SF Museum would publish and sell a book of his work to go along with the show.

Heck, it's only a 2-3 year wait. I can chill in the meantime:angel::bang:

 

[Lax Jought]

It'd be interesting to see what's in those undeveloped films.

 

[drewbarb]

Interesting news- thanks for the heads-up.

 

[sparrow6224]

There was a MoMA show in the 80s, highly controversial, Figments from teh Real World, which included prints made by another photographer of some of hte unedited processed images and from some of the previously undeveloped work. Much howling that since Winogrand hadn't edited the pictures, selected the final images to show, printed them or overseen their printing, then blah blah blah. I went and saw them and was powerfully moved by them and thought: so what ought we do with these undeveloped, unedited, unorganized images? Never look at them? that's like saying you should look at the Venus de Milo because her arms fell off. The late pictures are in color, Kodachrome I think. All suburban, many taken from his car. Amazing. The book of this title is said to be impossible to get -- Amazon shows a couple of dealers asking $300, so that's not impossible, just expensive. This man was a great photographer. He's much better technically and, in my view, artistically as well, than Robert Frank, who gets more press these days.

 

[Hjortsberg]

sorry. double post. see below

 

[Hjortsberg]

RE: The OP's suggestion to wait on the book purchases...
I would guess that shows like this would only add to Winogrand's stature and hence, increase the value of his earlier books. Maybe a good reason to buy rather than wait.?

the point i was making was that i'm sure there will be a book release to coincide with the show. if you're like me (who has no winogrand book), waiting might be a good idea if you have limited funds. new museum book, i'm guessing, would be about 75-100$, cheapest book now is around 300$.

the collector market is a whole different conversation. when getting into this hobby about a year ago I made a firm decision to try my best to not let myself get into a collector-speculator/hoarder/endless gear & book acquisition disorder state of being. i want to spend money shooting and developing instead.

believe me, it's a tall order for me. I've collected so much in my life: comic books, paperback pulp books; watches, straight razors. the list goes on and on and it can be deadly to my wallet.

so my money goes to shooting and I try to limit my purchase of beautiful photo books

 

[sepiareverb]

Szarkowski did struggle with the late work- great article about that stuff here. ***Warning- not work safe***

 

[celluloidprop]

There was a MoMA show in the 80s, highly controversial, Figments from teh Real World, [...] The book of this title is said to be impossible to get -- Amazon shows a couple of dealers asking $300, so that's not impossible, just expensive.

Whoa, I found it for $15 at my local Half Price Books last week.

 

[sepiareverb]

Whoa, I found it for $15 at my local Half Price Books last week.

Go get another!!

 

[emraphoto]

Interesting. Always wondered what it is like curating a bunch of new material once the artist is no longer with us...

Do the curators accommodate for ones propensity to change how they go about things? Do they put up the work they think we want to see?

A day or so ago I was wondering what Vivian Maer's (or however you spell it) edit would differ from what we see?

It seemed to me, seeing the later work of Winogrand, that he was in mid 'left turn'

 

[Araakii]

the point i was making was that i'm sure there will be a book release to coincide with the show. if you're like me (who has no winogrand book), waiting might be a good idea if you have limited funds. new museum book, i'm guessing, would be about 75-100$, cheapest book now is around 300$.

the collector market is a whole different conversation. when getting into this hobby about a year ago I made a firm decision to try my best to not let myself get into a collector-speculator/hoarder/endless gear & book acquisition disorder state of being. i want to spend money shooting and developing instead.

believe me, it's a tall order for me. I've collected so much in my life: comic books, paperback pulp books; watches, straight razors. the list goes on and on and it can be deadly to my wallet.

so my money goes to shooting and I try to limit my purchase of beautiful photo books

That's a nice mentality you've forced yourself to have. I am still buying like 2 copies of every good book so I can have an extra copy to sell or gift later when it goes OOP.

 

[Araakii]

Whoa, I found it for $15 at my local Half Price Books last week.

I check out HPB every week. They have awesome deals.

 

[celluloidprop]

A few years ago, they had stacks of remaindered Robert Frank and Eugene Richards books. Best haul ever.

 

[Papercut]

Thank you for the link to the Chiarenza article, sepiareverb. That was wonderful reading, a very thoughtful attempt to "make sense" of Winogrand on multiple levels.

Szarkowski did struggle with the late work- great article about that stuff here. ***Warning- not work safe***

 

[MISH]

I think Garry Winogrand was a photographic genius (trust me I am right about this)
however not everyone agrees with me and any book of his will eventually go out of print and they become hard to find and very expensive, so you can bet if SFMOMA puts out a book to accompany the show I will be buying it soon and avoiding the remorse I feel about not getting a couple of his other books (in particular 1964, the book of his color work)

 

[Hjortsberg]

Whoa, I found it for $15 at my local Half Price Books last week.

story of my life. scores like that aren't in my cards.

 

[benlees]

I don't think Figments is that rare: I got one a couple of years a go for $30 (second printing 2003). Winogrand's later stuff doesn't measure up to his peak. There is a lot of good to say about going through all his unproofed negs but it is a double edged sword for sure.

 

[MichaelW]

I'd love to see the 1964 book.

 

[Nigel Meaby]

Just did a search on Abe Books for Figments and lots available for a long way under $300. I bought mine a couple of years ago for around $45 from a book shop in New York, mail order to the UK. As said it's not that rare. Maybe it's the First Edition selling for around $300?

 

[chrishayton]

I had pretty much every Winogrand book whilst I was at uni on permanent loan along with William Klein's New york amongst others, It was fantastic rooting through the library finding rare out of print photo books.
I hated the day I had to return them when I graduated 🙁