Category — Visual Art

Photography always grabbed my attention as a very unique art form. Photography to me is an expression of the way we see the world. We all see the same thing but photographers present them to us in “artistic” ways that we can be reminded of. Garry Winograd truly adopted this. His story personally reminded me of a journey in which he documented his steps by means of his photography. What really stood out to me about his pictures was the thought and effort he put into it. I recall the one picture that really stood out to me. It was possibly the worst quality picture in that most of the picture is blocked out by a person’s body. There’s only a small gap in the middle but through that gap you can see the faces of Eisenhower and Nixon. Out of the experiences he went through this stood out to me because he probably had to go through much effort to get the shot. As a photographer he was probably placed behind all the press cameras with no clear angle. He went out on great journeys across New York City and America. I appreciate the fact that this picture was up in the museum because it really told much about Winogrand’s prowess when it came to photography. 

After hearing the introduction in class about Winogrand’s photography, I was unsure if I would enjoy the exhibit. It seemed like an odd concept to go around and take photographs of unaware people. Also, I went on an international trip this past summer and one of my friends had quite a similar hobby as Winogrand. At various tourist attractions, she would discreetly take photographs of strangers in interesting situations. With an open mind, I adjusted my mental lens and stepped into the exhibit.

The Gary Winogrand exhibit definitely ended up being a new and exhilarating experience for me. I enjoyed Winogrand’s ability to capture specific elements of human interaction. Some of his photographs were like watching an old movie and hitting the pause button to stop at a specific moment in time. Certain scenes captured sly flirtatious glances whereas others displayed uncontrollable laughter. At first, I was dissatisfied that the majority of the photographs were untitled. I found myself desperately searching for some context to place them in. Then it occurred to me that Winogrand captures little moments that display the human condition. Even though his photographs are taking place at a specific unidentified time and place, the scenarios they depict could be seen at other given times and places in space because of our shared human nature.

I really enjoyed looking through the Gary Winogrand show. While the subjects in his pictures did not move like the ones in Harry Potter, they were still full of life.  Each shot captured a scene and froze it at the perfect or precisely imperfect moment, which made it so much more real.  I also liked that each of the pictures were labeled with a place and time.  I felt like he was giving you a sort of photographical latitude and longitude to bring you to the moment of the shot, showing that photography, when done correctly, really does take you places.  There were no descriptions or made up titles because the scene says it all; it is so real you can’t possibly assign a name to it and risk ruining the effect of the picture.

As I was perusing through the gallery I found myself drawn to some shots mores than others.  These were the perfect shots, the ones that looked obviously beautiful in my opinion.  The boy picking up the girl in the waves, the water spraying around.  The symmetry of the alignment of people dispersed on a ferry.  The football game caught in the middle of a play. Other photographs were harder to see the beauty in, and I needed to spend a bit more time thinking about them. The mother holding a frowning toddler’s hand in the water.  A rainy hazy street with a blurred figure of a man on the side.  A woman caught mid-laugh dancing with a man. Theses pictures were more common and I think reflect Gary Winogrand’s main style. Sometimes the whole beauty of a moment is not in what it looks like, but just as it is. I am sure it is a beautiful moment when a baby is born, but the newborn is far from beautiful, excuse my crude description but he/she is a little, pruny thing, covered in blood and other matters.  But is that moment in time not beautiful? The same goes for many of Winorgrand’s photos. The moments themselves are beautiful. Maybe the true beauty of photography doesn’t lie in the scene it copies, rather, it is in the moment it portrays.

Take the picture of the woman caught mid-laugh dancing with a man.  It is a rather unattractive shot for her.  If I was the woman and someone had snapped that unflattering shot of me, I would demand a retake.  If this was some bride and groom dancing at their wedding, I can say for certain this photo didn’t make it into the wedding album. Now, if the picture that been snapped a second before or after, her smile would probably be a bit less gaping and would look more conventionally beautiful. But that moment of the peak of her laughter as he spins her around the dance floor would not be completely conveyed if her smile was more reserved. Does the woman look beautiful in Winogrand’s picture? I don’t think so.  Is the photo beautiful? I think it is. And the same goes for many of his other shots.

I’m looking through the pictures on my phone that I took last Friday as I tried to recapture some of the photographs in the exhibit. Well I didn’t just try to recapture the photographs—for that I could easily search Google. I wanted to capture the spirit of each photograph on the wall, the feelings they evoked, the mesmerized murmur of the intrigued viewers. For that, my iPhone didn’t exactly do the trick.

Along with the multitude of other museumgoers, from the non-discreet art students to the British tourists, I was awe-struck. Those photographs were beautiful. I suppose not all, and maybe some were more beautiful than others, but as a whole that exhibit was nothing short of beauty. I know the feeling that I get from looking at beautiful artwork—my eyes widen, I become increasingly quieter, a sensation that I can’t exactly describe finds its way through my heart or my mind or whatever it is that experiences sensations, and I experience this feeling of longing. And I can’t say I’ve gotten that from photography all that much in my life, quite possibly never. Photography (or at least what I’ve seen) always bordered on the cliché. Photographing something that is already beautiful is hardly something to gawk at. I can admire the beautiful scenery in the frame but as a photograph itself it could never give me much to love. Gary Winogrand’s work is different. It is beautiful, not because what he captured was always beautiful, but because the capture itself was.

Now I realize that that doesn’t make much sense. As I was looking at the photographs, I couldn’t help but be attracted to the ones of women from the 50s and 60s. I just love it. In regards to his photographs of women, Winogrand said (as I read on the exhibit wall), “I don’t know if all the women in the photographs are beautiful, but I do know that the women are beautiful in the photographs.” I think that articulates much more eloquently what I’m trying to say. He captured reality. It was real, and that’s what I found so mesmerizing. I guess it makes sense then that I particularly loved the ones of the Bronx, Manhattan, and of course Brooklyn. It was refreshing but also nostalgic, despite my obvious not being there.

One of the quotes displayed on the exhibit wall very much resonated with me, and really spoke to the play between reality and fantasy evident in his photographs. “Sometimes I feel like . . . the world is a place I bought a ticket to. It’s a big show for me, as if it wouldn’t happen if I wasn’t there with a camera.” If that doesn’t sum it up, I don’t know what does.

I felt the Gary Winogrand exhibit was one of those things you don’t really think about until someone puts the idea right in front of you. I’ve walked around New York City and have obviously seen a menagerie of people go about their daily lives. I’ve even wondered who this people are and what they;re doing in their day, but theres something different and kind of eerie with capturing that moment on film like Winogrand does. The first photograph I saw as one of a young woman the artist took without her knowing and unexpectedly. I got kind of a peeping-tom/ paparazzi type vibe from the exhibit at first because that’s what it was for me, little private glimpses into an unknowing person’s life, but that is what I think what was trying to be captured in these pictures. I generally liked the exhibit because it wasn’t staged, it was pure human existence which is one of the most complex, beautiful, and ugly things I feel we will ever experience in life.

After looking at some pictures I stated watching the people watching the pictures. Most were really  enthralled and deeply observing the photos and I overheard this one conversation. What looked like a mother and daughter. The mother was explaining one picture to the girl who had to be around 14 or 15 about the “juxtaposition of  the men in the air force and the plain where they are where stationed in with their families watching them go” The woman was clearly very into the gallery and was explaining to her daughter the “creepiness” of the air force and how Winogrand was trying to make a statement about the war in this image. After this very insightful and very passionate explanation of this picture her daughter just looks up at her with a completely teenage look on her face and goes “What’s so creepy about the air force?” Which to me this exchange  shows exactly what the photos themselves were trying to show, the different degrees of human emotion, life,and perspective in one singular place.

I could not have been more excited to see the Garry Winogrand exhibit. It was a long day traveling through the city, the same day as the Brooklyn Museum workshop at the Macaulay building. When I arrived at the Metropolitan Museum, it took my breath away. The building was just so majestic and enormous; it quickly lifted my mood. When I reached the Garry Winogrand exhibit, I realized that my day was going to be an emotional rollercoaster. My first feeling was disappointment. It looked as if Garry Winogrand took pictures of things to see what they would look like in pictures. His photographs had me wondering if I took a random picture of a woman in a crowded city, or a picture of a man in a telephone booth, or maybe a picture of a soldier walking in a street, would it be art? Would it be beautiful? No, perhaps my photos would not be art or beautiful because I wouldn’t know how to capture it. I cannot predict what it would like in a photograph. I think that Garry Winogrand had the talent to picture in his mind what a subject would look like in a photograph. Perhaps he would argue against this, but then how would he know what to shoot and what not to shoot. There was a quote by Garry Winogrand in one of the rooms that read, “I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed.” I silently laughed to myself the first time I read this because it was exactly what I thought Garry Winogrand did. But looking back, there was something exciting knowing that Winogrand looked at something, thought “What would this look like photographed?” and just took a photo of it. What’s really funny to me now is that I learned a lot about the photographer, versus the subjects of the photos. I learned that Winogrand was known for street photography, shooting in crowded and dense cities. He also photographed animals in a zoo (don’t ask which one), but the most important thing I learned is that this artist enjoyed taking photographs. He had a passion for shooting pictures. Garry Winogrand’s exhibition taught me to remember the simple things and to find art in the things all around me. I not only learned to appreciate the simple photos, but I also learned to appreciate the love Garry Winogrand had for simply taking pictures.

“If you didn’t take the picture, you weren’t there.”

Garry took photographs like he was in the moment he captured. He didn’t take it as if he wanted to keep it with him for the rest of his life; he took the picture as if he wanted to remember the emotions he experienced. The majority of Garry’s pictures showed this. They weren’t just pictures of random events, they were pictures of everything. All his photos had elements of suspense, clarity, impending doom, serenity and  dishevelment. All of these emotions came together to create each and every photo that he took. The black and white he used also helped. The black and white kept everything simple, You look at one point of the picture, and it is the focal point. That helped his photographs immensely. Had they been color photos, he wouldn’t be able to convey the same emotions.

The exhibit was a good experience. The way Winograd was able to recreate his experiences made you feel like you were there with him. This was probably why he said the quote from the beginning, to reassure us that we weren’t actually there. Some of his images weren’t as emotional as others. I thought that some of the images were stuck in the exhibit just to fill up space, but the photographs that had emotion were truly breathtaking. One of the photographs that I personally enjoyed was the one photo he had of a city. He most likely took the photo from a helicopter, but it was amazing. The black and white of that photo helped bring out the contrast between the ocean and the companies situated along the oceanside. Other than that photo, there were a couple of other ones that I like just as much.

First let me start by saying that I love black and white photographs. I had never actually heard of Gary Winogrand  but i had definitely seen many of his photographs. The exhibit itself was great, it was in chronological order and I feel as though it very accurately portrayed life in America from the 1950’s all the way to the 80’s. My favorite picture depicted a man lying dead on the street. There was police all around and you could only see his legs and a pool of blood. In the background there people walking and going about there business. This photograph really made me think of something my grandma always used to say “El muerto al hoyo el vivo al baile” it translated the dead go in the ground while the living go to parties. Life always goes on for others.

As I walked through Central Park to get to the MET, I couldn’t help but wonder. Have I ever been to the MET on a school trip? What does it look like? Are we even going the right away?
Then, I arrived. As I looked up at this building and I saw what a social scene it was, I was shocked. People were all gathered around just talking and having a good time outside the building. There was a lovely fountain that I enjoyed watching as I looked up a bit. So I realized this museum was actually a place I might return to. Maybe it wouldn’t just be a one-time-experience. Then, as I entered, I saw a poster that said Gary Winograd exhibit.
Well, I had photos of magazines that were being sold at the exhibit and of displays by the exhibit and of a few of my favorite photos, but they won’t upload. (uchhh)

Anyways, there was one photo (that I was supposed to place here) that we saw in class. It was really cool to see it up close and personal and be able to recognize it. I remember seeing that picture in class and thinking, “Anyone could take a picture of that. That shouldn’t make anyone famous.” At the exhibit, however, I realized that I was underestimating photography. There I was, just trying to take a photo of that photo, and it was a real struggle trying to find the right angle with the right lighting. And imagine having to do that in the moment when the real event is occurring? You can’t just have models stand there while you try time after time to get the picture right. There’s no 3 strikes and you’re out. You have one shot to get the right picture. And I’ll give credit where credit is due so props to Gary Winograd.

Another thing I really enjoyed was that he proved how natural these photos were. I don’t know if the photographer was aware of this but I highly think he was- he took two photos of a man and woman sitting on a table with the woman smoking. They were very similar photos, but their positions switched a bit and that’s how you know it wasn’t just posed. They’re not just in one typical position or doing anything special. It’s just a natural moment of a man and a woman and I really like how he was able to capture that.
Even though it was a little confusing for me as to where the exhibit began and ended at first, finding out which photos were Gary Winograd’s wasn’t a difficult task. He had a theme going for him and it comes to show that the little moments are what count most. Having photos of people’s every day lives shows how important every moment is and how people should never let time slip by. I had a great experience visiting this exhibit last Friday. It was a great bonding experience to have with the friend that I brought along with me that day. I realized that just taking selfies with your friends might not be such a difficult task, but finding the right moment to take a picture from the right angle which sends the right message, can be pretty challenging. It opened my eyes to what an art photography really is.