Gary Winogrand Exhibition

olli

Super Moderator Emeritus
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olli
I visited the Winogrand exhibition at the National Gallery in DC that I mentioned a while back. It opened at the weekend. If you're in DC it's a must see; if you're not in DC it might well be worth your while heading down to see it.

First, my confession. I've never been that fussed by Winogrand. The standard NY street shots that usually accompanied pieces about him online were interesting enough but never really grabbed me. I'll also confess that not having been impressed by the headline shots I never bother digging any deeper. I have to say that after visiting the exhibition I'm a convert - his best work in the exhibition is outstanding, most of the rest is not far off and there are only a handful of duds.

The exhibition works because it frees him from the constraints of being a 'New York street photographer' and demonstrates a much broader range of subject matter, styles, and geographical range. (And his NY street photography, while including the standards, has many more, much better images). There's also a 15 minute video with excerpts from a Q$A session he did at a University. Takeaway quote: 'photographic technique is easy...photography is a very forgiving process'. (I'm paraphrasing slightly).

There are 5 (or possibly 6) rooms of images - around 160 in all, of which around 60 have been printed for public display for the first time. A handful of these are from films that Winogrand never developed so even he didn't see them. Others are from contact sheets that Winogrand had marked but never printed.

There is of course a very substantial book to go along with the exhibition. About 450 pages, about 450 images. $85 for the hardback, $50 for the paperback.

The exhibition is on until June 8 so there's plenty of time. More on the NGA website.
 
I came across the full Q&A session with Winogrand that is presented in edited form in the exhibition. It's on YouTube and runs for 1 hour 45 minutes. I'm not sure how long it will be up.
 
I saw it in San Francisco last year. Garry Winogrand is one of my favorite photographers. I'm a big fan, last year I also took a course on Winogrand at ICP in NYC.
 
It's going on to Paris and Madrid (or maybe it's already been ?) but not the UK sadly. So I'll never see it either
 
I think it's John Berger who has written extensively about the transformation of art as something in itself, to art as curated object (and thus necessarily owned and available only to some); not of course that art was ever "democratically available to all", but the situation has developed ever more strongly over the past couple of hundred years, accelerating in the last half of the 20th C I suppose.
 
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