Garry Winogrand

Edited by photographer and essayist Rubinfien, this landmark volume serves as the catalogue to a Winogrand (1928-1984) travelling retrospective opening in March 2013 at the San Francisco Museum of Art, and features 460 black-and-white photographs and five accompanying essays. The catalogue mixes the photographer’s most famous images with some never-before-seen work from previously undeveloped film and unpublished contact sheets. Unlike contemporaries Robert Frank and Lee Friedlander, Winogrand’s work is distinctly off-kilter and frenetic, richly evoking the societal changes afoot in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s. However, the work is also deeply personal—he shows us Americans from all walks of life, their relationships to each other, and their environment. In several famous shots, we see their reactions to him and his camera, as in the woman laughing while holding an ice cream cone, clearly amused by something he said. Just as masterfully, Winogrand sometimes captured an entire tableau, as in the shot of eight people on a New York park bench, which contains multiple stories competing for attention. Winogrand reveals the inimitable rowdiness of real life in all its tragic and comic excess, establishing a whole new style of street shooting that is celebrated in this fine volume. 460 duotone illus. (Apr.)