Biography

Garry Winogrand was a legendary American photographer, regarded as highly influential for his street photographs documenting the social and cultural landscape of mid-century metropolitan United States. Shot almost exclusively in black and white, Winogrand's images provide a slice of 20th-century American culture, replete with all the nightlife, excitement, heartbreak, trauma, and banality that constitutes life. “Photography is not about the thing photographed,” he famously said. “It is about how that thing looks photographed.” Born on January 14, 1928 in the Bronx, NY, he studied painting and photography at City College and Columbia University and graduated in 1948, embarking on a commercial and personal photographic career. He participated in the groundbreaking 1955 exhibition “The Family of Man” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and gained acclaim among his peers Diane Arbus and Lee Friedlander. Winogrand's later life and work was marked with landmark acclaim and success, garnering an exceptional three Guggenheim Awards in 1964, 1969, and 1979, as well as a plethora of exhibitions that included a major retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art in 1988. Winogrand died on March 19, 1984, having taken and developed some 20,000 rolls of film over the course of his life.