Garry Winogrand
Garry Winogrand
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Garry Winogrand

Garry Winogrand (/ˈwɪnəɡrænd/; January 14, 1928 – March 19, 1984) was an American street photographer, who portrayed U.S. life and its social issues in the mid-20th century. Photography curator, historian, and critic John Szarkowski called Winogrand the central photographer of his generation.

He received three Guggenheim Fellowships to work on personal projects, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and published four books during his lifetime. He was one of three photographers featured in the influential New Documents exhibition at Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1967 and had solo exhibitions there in 1969, 1977, and 1988. He supported himself by working as a freelance photojournalist and advertising photographer in the 1950s and 1960s, and taught photography in the 1970s. His photographs were featured in photography magazines including Popular Photography, Eros, Contemporary Photographer, and Photography Annual.

Critic Sean O'Hagan wrote in 2014 that in "the 1960s and 70s, he defined street photography as an attitude as well as a style – and it has laboured in his shadow ever since, so definitive are his photographs of New York"; and in 2010 that though he photographed elsewhere, "Winogrand was essentially a New York photographer: frenetic, in-your-face, arty despite himself." Phil Coomes, writing for BBC News in 2013, said "For those of us interested in street photography there are a few names that stand out and one of those is Garry Winogrand, whose pictures of New York in the 1960s are a photographic lesson in every frame."

In his lifetime, Winogrand published four monographs: The Animals (1969), Women are Beautiful (1975), Public Relations (1977) and Stock Photographs: The Fort Worth Fat Stock Show and Rodeo (1980). At the time of his death, his late work remained undeveloped, with about 2,500 rolls of undeveloped film, 6,500 rolls of developed but not proofed exposures, and about 3,000 rolls only realized as far as contact sheets being made.

Winogrand's parents, Abraham and Bertha, emigrated to the U.S. from Budapest and Warsaw. Garry was born and raised in a predominantly Jewish working-class area of the Bronx, New York City, where he grew up with his sister Stella; his father was a leather worker in the garment industry, and his mother made neckties for piecemeal work.

Winogrand graduated from high school in 1946 and entered the U.S. Army Air Force. He returned to New York in 1947 and studied painting at City College of New York and painting and photography at Columbia University, also in New York, in 1948. He also attended a photojournalism class taught by Alexey Brodovitch at The New School for Social Research in New York in 1951.

Winogrand worked as a freelance photojournalist and advertising photographer in the 1950s and 1960s. Between 1952 and 1954 he freelanced with the PIX Publishing agency in Manhattan on an introduction from Ed Feingersh, and from 1954 at Brackman Associates.

Winogrand's beach scene of a man playfully lifting a woman above the waves appeared in the 1955 The Family of Man exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York which then toured the world to be seen by 9 million visitors. His first solo show was held at Image Gallery in New York in 1959. His first notable exhibition was in Five Unrelated Photographers in 1963, also at MoMA in New York, along with Minor White, George Krause, Jerome Liebling, and Ken Heyman.

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