The Master’s Unseen Images

The works of gifted street photographer Garry Winogrand capture those exceptional moments normally confined to memory, not film – the glimpse of something so powerful that it becomes a revelation. (Above: 1969, New York)

More than 300 of Winogrand’s photos go on exhibit at SFMOMA this spring, a small portion of the 250,000 images he’d never even seen, left when he died unexpectedly in 1984. He was a major force in mid-century photography, capturing the vibe of the 60s. But his work has been largely unexamined because he delayed editing his images, leaving hundreds of thousands undeveloped or unproofed. 

“I think part of the aim was to unsettle people’s ideas, whether his own or other people’s. To move people out of an unquestioning space and to some less settled space in which the authority of rules and structures was broken up a bit.” –Eileen Hale, Garry Winogrand’s widow (Above: Los Angeles, 1964)

He created “a jubilant, epic portrait of America that is Whitmanesque in its ambition to encompass the whole of the nation’s life. One of the principal artists in any medium of the eruptive 1960s, Winogrand combines a sense of the hope and buoyancy of American life after World War II with a powerful anxiety, presenting America shining with possibility while also threatening to spin out of control.” -Exhibition Notes  (Above: World’s Fair, 1964)

Winogrand chronicled the tumult of the 60s and 70s, from peace demonstrations (Above: 1970, New York) to the burgeoning culture of the media age. (Below: Muhammad Ali, 1970)

At all times, he set standards for street shooting that still reverberate today, reflecting the combined simplicity and gravitas of everyday lives.

Garry Winogrand From the PBS show Creativity, 1982

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More on Garry Winogrand and his works, here.