Garry Winogrand is a mid to late 20th century photographer. He was born in 1928 in the Bronx, New York and joined the Airforce for 18 months out of high school before, with the support of the G.I. Bill, studying painting at the City College of New York. From there he transferred to Columbia University where he enrolled in more painting classes but also joined the camera club which gave him access to a darkroom. Winogrand began to obsess over photography: spending day and night shooting and developing pictures. After a year, he ditched what he viewed as the painfully slow process of painting to photography—a medium which allowed him to experiment with the motion of the world in a way that was efficient enough to allow for a large volume of work.
In 1952, Winogrand married Adrienne Lubow, a dancer and got a job with Pix Photo Agency in Manhattan. Dissatisfied and bored with that job and its constant waiting in an office, Winogrand photographed for himself a series at Stillman’s Gym—a place known for boxers and fight clubs. In 1954, he left Pix for another agency, The Brackman Associates and his photographs began to appear in Collier’s Sports Illustrated and Pageant, among many other magazines. In an article written about him in Popular Photography, it writes: “He usually is seen dressed in a baggy tweed sports jacket, his tie askew, his shoes scuffed, with a well-worn Leica sloping from his shoulders. He has a relaxed off-hand manner and a dry wit. But this placid exterior is deceptive…As one friend put it, ‘Garry is interested in everything.”
In 1960, Winogrand moved back to New York after a stay in Los Angeles and returned to his failing marriage. By 1963 he was divorced and estranged from his family and children. During this hard time of his life he was quoted as saying: “Photography is always out there; it’s a way to get out of yourself,” and “I began to live within the photographic process.” As Winogrand would walk the streets of Manhattan compulsively photograph every woman he found attractive; a process he viewed as an investigation into the meaning of photography and the photographic method.
Winogrand received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1964 and once again went out west to Los Angeles, stopping at many places throughout the country along the way. His trips out west as well as his primary living in New York City, have resulted in a coastal duality in Winogrand’s work.
Winogrand once said: “The way I understand it, a photographer’s relationship to his medium is responsible for his relationship to the world is responsible for his relationship to his medium.”
(SOURCE: Papageorge, Tod. Public Relations: Garry Winogrand. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1977. Print.)
